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Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

Original poster

Cat poo in my garden!!!!

52 replies

colditzmum · 18/03/2005 14:04

My garden is covered in cat poo, the lawn, and the woodchip under ds's swing. How can I get rid of it? My whole garden smells like a toilet, and I really want ds to be able to play outside this year!

OP posts:
JoolsToo · 19/03/2005 13:13

now!

fuzzywuzzy · 19/03/2005 13:47

Something bizzarre I read somewhere apparantly tiger wee stops cats/dogs from coming into your garden, just sprinkle it around your garden. According to the instructions the local zoo will supply you with the stuff! Question 'How on earth do they errr harvest it??'

fuzzywuzzy · 19/03/2005 13:48

or it could have been lion wee....

Original poster
colditzmum · 19/03/2005 14:53

I haven't tried any of these out yet, I've been at work, but I will try them next saturday (my next day off! grr)

OP posts:
jangly · 21/03/2005 13:56

Percy Thrower (in days of old ), always recommended Renardine. There is a mention of it here. cat repellants

WigWamBam · 21/03/2005 14:15

The orange peel trick is worth a try, cats really can't stand the smell - although you will need to replace it every so often as the smell wears off. The theory is that they'll give up within a couple of weeks and find somewhere else to use as a loo, then you can stop using the orange peel.

alison222 · 21/03/2005 14:21

My mums neighbour told her jeyes fluid works. She is currently trying it out. 2 weeks later all still clear and the lawn hasn't died either which she was worried about

CountessDracula · 21/03/2005 14:21

(sorry irrelevant I know but every time I see this thread title, I hum "reminds me baby of you"!)

marthamoo · 21/03/2005 14:31

Lion poo didn't work, orange peel didn't work, Jeyes Fluid didn't work, bottles of water didn't work, CDs on strings didn't work, moth balls didn't work, sticks embedded in the lawn didn't work...

had some success last summer with Olbas Oil on teabags, but you have to keep freshening them up. Keep your grass as short as possible - and get rid of the bark, they love it.

I would like to concrete over our lawn as I am so sick of cat poo. I think cod's right that the only sure fire method is to get your own cat but as I loathe cats now (used to like them before having my own cat toilet garden) I'm damned if I'm doing that.

Only thing I haven't tried is one of those sonar sound repellant devices - they are so expensive and I would want to be sure it would work first.

vkone · 21/03/2005 14:47

The only thing I found that workedwas putting scraps out (my old driving instructor told me this). The theory is they won't crap where the eat.

Also, cats hate gravel, as long as it's big enough (1cm gravel), our 3 won't even walk on it!

sandwiches · 05/08/2009 15:50

So far I've tried everything and it's cost me a fortune to buy rador thing, pepper, cayenne pepper, extra oranges and every other thing thats been suggested. The neighbours have just moved in and have about 7 cats which all shit in my garden and veggie patch so I've had to pull up all the veg and ditch it (more expense) BUT the humans don't care. My children can't play in the back garden anymore without me or DH going over it with a fine tooth comb as I don't want the kids to catch anything, it's disgusting. It makes the house smell and there's flys everywhere.

I'm close to setting a trap for the cats and driving them somewhere far away. Or taking a crap in their garden and see if they find that acceptable. The cats are THEIR animals not mine. grrrrrr

notagrannyyet · 05/08/2009 16:08

This year we are being plagued by cats not in our garden but on the single story extension at the back of our house. I looked out this morning to see 3 more piles of cat poo on the tiles outside my bedroom window....nice! DH has been up the ladder 3 times already this summer cleaning the stuff off. All the rain we've had you'd have thought it would have washed away! I will try throwing orange peel on the roof see if that works.

Cats round here must be getting lazy. I thought they always burried it. The extension was built nearly 15 years ago and it's never been a problem until this summer.

dietqueen · 05/08/2009 22:45

orange peel

Pip51 · 15/08/2009 21:20

I use Growing Success cat repellent. It's really good and you don't need to keep children and pets away from treated areas.I get it from a local gardening shop.

Pebbles71 · 14/04/2010 12:50

I have cats and their faeces all over my front driveway which is graveled and am now having to pay thousands to have it tarmacked because of the dam creatures....you open my front door and all you smell is cat s..t its repulsive and makes me want to throw up!!!!they sit all over my car...hate them...if i had poison i would put it down so they drank it and died,thats how much I hate these dam creatures.

MargeHomerBart · 16/04/2010 19:10

Someone told me to throw orange peel on the lawn as the cats liked to poo on my lawn too.

I did (satsuma peel actually) and they havn't been back since!

They don't do citrus apparently.

InVinoFerretsAss · 16/04/2010 19:19

Holly works.

We have a holly bush and I noticed that when the leaves fall and dry out the spiky bits become even more sharp, like little needles. I left them where they fell and noticed that there was no cat poo on that bit of the flower beds.

Now I cut them, let them dry out and scatter them around the offending areas. Seems to have worked!

It's also not unknown for me to relax in a deck chair armed with the hose pipe and a cold shandy and shoot the little bastards when they show up.

GossipWitch · 21/08/2011 21:55

My wise old grandmother once told me that cats will poo in the same place because they can smell their previous poo, which is handy if you move and have cats, and are worried about them running off, at least you can put the litter tray out. Which may also work if you would like to relocate their poo, i.e. to their own garden perhaps ...

Davekels · 15/05/2012 22:10

I have found moth balls work,until it rains, i have tried other things, but this definatly works. make sure you get rid of all the poo first, then apply a few moth balls to the area, a few more depending on size of garden. like i say it works until it rains.

Anste · 15/05/2012 22:27

Mint, but grow it in a pot otherwise it will spread all over the garden.

Cuddler · 19/05/2012 16:54

I have two cats and they poo in my garden all the time,its annoying getting it up but i prefer that to emptying a litter tray.judging by the amount of pooi get up they dont do it in anyone elses garden.It must be annoying if its not even your cat,so yeah,get a water gun,or a big dog!(but dog poos are worse and smellier!)

dizzyb23 · 10/04/2017 08:53

I have been battling this problem for years. I'm a gardener and although i love animals very much, i don't have pets and don't wish to deal with the problems they cause. My ignorant neighbours don't care about anyone else and just keep on getting pets and ensuring the rest of us have to put up with the negative side of pet ownership such as noise, smell and poo.
After shovelling s* from other peoples' cats for so many years and becoming a grandma, i made the decision to deal with this once and for all. I researched cat proofing a garden. This is possible to keep cats in their own gardens which is a good idea these days with the decimation of our wildlife, accidents and now a sick animal killer on the loose. So if it's possible to keep cats in a garden then the reverse must be true. I have tried every possible "remedy" such as orange peel, jeyes fluid, coffee grounds, mirrors, water, lion pee, etc. NOTHING works. The sonic scarers don't work, water pistols only work at the time and no one can patrol their gardens 24 hours a day. So i went all out and spent £3000 on new fencing, chicken wire, wire, security spikes, lights, thorny bushes, landscaping, moving sheds. So much hard work, time and effort. This worked up until the day my idiot neighbour deliberately put a large old bedroom cabinet up against my fence which gave a very spritely cat a way up onto my fence. She bent the chicken wire which enabled the cat to walk onto my pergola. There are no easy answers here. Apart from cat owners suddenly deciding to keep their damn pets to themselves we will always be affected by them. Sorry...

Mermaidinthesea123 · 15/04/2017 13:00

Well I think it's also the owners. My two will spend hours outside in summer then come in to use the tray then go out again. I spend quite a lot of time cleaning and emptying the litter trays.
All of my neighbours say there is no cat poo in their garden because we talk about it, mind you two of them have dogs and the other one has a totally overgrown garden.
Owners need a litter tray per cat and an extra one.
My cats never crap in my garden either they come in.
I have heard of an automatic water spray but you'd have to turn it off if your kids were in the garden.
A cat is a lot of work but most people just let them run wild.

dizzyb23 · 15/04/2017 15:45

Mermaidinthesea....wow....sincerely wish you were my neighbour. You are correct, i shouldn't blame the animals. It is entirely the fault of their owners. Last night the weather was nasty were i live and it was about 11.30 pm and it was raining hard but as i looked out of my back bedroom window and closing the curtains, there was the neighbours cat digging up my kale seedlings!! I opened the window and shouted. It ran up my polytunnel puncturing the plastic in several places quite badly and threw itself over the very high fence. To say i was upset was an understatement. I've spent a couple of hours this morning repairing the polytunnel and searching for cat poo among the plants that we will be eating later in the year. I'm so beyond fed up of other peoples attitudes. We all sadly have to live so close to each other these days that we should have some consideration for each other. I wish everyone who decides to get a cat would do what you do and be so responsible. Your neighbours are very fortunate.

JeffreySadsacIsUnwell · 15/04/2017 22:10

I started reading this thread and was amazed to see that Cod had returned... Then got a feeling of deja vu when I got on to the Jeyes suggestion... Then realised the thread was started TWELVE BLOODY YEARS AGO.

FFS.

Now feeling vvvv old.

If it helps anyone, I followed the original suggestion of orange peel BACK IN 2005 WHEN I FIRST READ THIS THREAD and all that happened was the peel went mouldy and the cats shat next to it. HTH.