How do I stop our cats from pooing all over our lawn? :(

[xkr]

Hi, with spring here our children are really keen to play outside in the garden, the problem is both of cats are constantly pooing all over the lawn (and on the stones in the area we keep our bins which is even more of a nightmare to clean up) and I just don’t know how to stop them

We’ve tried keeping the grass really short (mowed daily), we’ve tried putting all of the poo into a particular area hoping it’ll encourage them there, we’ve tried various sprays that are supposed to act as a deterrent, but so far nothing has helped :(

Please does anyone have some suggestions on how we can fix this? Thank you

Not necessarily. MrCat's outdoor 'toilet' is undetectable. He buries properly when he goes outdoors. And being behind a shrub it is not somewhere I spend much time, anyway. I never need to clean up after him outdoors.

My DH has a corner of our garden as cat's toilet. He dug it over threw 2 bags of sand in and dug it all in. We took away the cat litter tray and threw it on top of the sand/earth heep. Then put cats there several times a day. After the first couple of days they started using it by themselves. Cats bury their poo if they can. Each week DH digs it over a bit and throws more sand on top. The mound gets high over the year with the adding of more sand. At the end of the year he just shovels some of it into the shrub borders around plants and then starts again.

If your cats aren't burying their poo it usually means they are in a territory dispute with another cat. Visible (smelly) poo is scent marking territory in a more forceful way than just peeing up the fence. Our cat did that when we first got him (a long time ago now) but now he uses the borders and the rhododendron and roses love it! He digs holes, does his business and buries it - he even manages to get bark back over!

I don't think my cat has got that memo 🤣 She sometimes poos on the lawn, and leaves it uncovered

@Dilbertian thank you for writing this, it was really interesting to read. I'm looking at one on Amazon which is 500ml for £5.85, how much do you dilute it? We have an issue with what feels like the entire neighbourhoods cats using our front garden and gravel drive as their personal loo. Cats don't have the best smelling poos at the best of times but these cats diets aren't great I imagine as theirs are particularly fetid.

Every time you clear poo from anywhere you don't want the cat to poo, spray the spot with diluted ammonia. Cats hate the smell, so they won't want to return to that spot.
Sprinkle the entire lawn, and anywhere else you don't want them to poo, with Silent Roar
https://amzn.eu/d/2chqaQi?tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21 . But you have to have cleared the area and ammonia'd it first

If the bottle gives instructions for dilution for domestic use, use that. Otherwise you'll have to experiment. Too strong and it will burn your plants. You want it strong enough to smell nasty and weak enough to not harm the plants. IIRC It acts as a Nitrogen fertiliser when weak.

S others have found, citrus smells can also put cats off areas. But I don't know whether they break down the scents that cats leave.

They used to poo on my lawn but seem to have stopped..... not even seen them for a couple of years. Think DS may have had something to persuade them away.

Yep exactly this, we've had 6 cats in total and they've always gone in the soil and buried it, but for some reason when we moved house the two we have now have started just going on the lawn :/

My cat suddenly started doing this as well, always used to go in the border.

Unfortunately he has a condition which means his poop isn't exactly ' solid' so very hard to clean up off grass.
So I bought him a beautiful covered, very expensive outdoor litter box which he decided was the best place to snooze the day away.
Now he has an indoor tray which is a pain but at least it's easy to clean