Making cat owners responsible

[TheNaze73]

Are you sick of clearing up cat poo from your garden? I know I am & I don't even have a cat!

Their mess can cause BLINDNESS in children

Please read, sign & share my friends petition. Thank you

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/125500

Either they are pets or they are wild animals. Cat owners need to make up their minds. There is a recent thread saying cats should be chipped and drivers ought to notify the police if they run over a cat.

Which is it? You don't notify anyone when you run over a rabbit or a squirrel.

I agree. Cats don't have owners. They have staff!

I'll ask my cats what they think when they come in.

Have you ever met a cat?

I think you'll find that legally, cats are classed as wild animals. Owners cannot be held responsible for cats behaviour and if you run over a cat, you don't have to report it, unlike a dog.

I have a cat. I don't know where he wanders or poos. How should I "be responsible" for him?

I don't think cats should be pets tbh.
By nature they are roamers not biologically happy to stay put.
Owners can't follow them round picking up their mess and we shouldn't have to put up with mess in our garden.
Our neighbours are that pissed off with them they have started to poison, throw stones, gripper spikes on walls and all manner of horrible things.
Yes it's cruel, but why should people put up with cat shit.
Our next door neighbours have one of those air rifle things they shoot to scare them.

I think that lots of cat owners wilfully ignore the problem of cats crapping over their neighbour's gardens.

OP I do see your point but I can't see how cat owners can be made to be responsible because the fact that they get a cat in the first place shows that they are not really that bothered about the impact on their neighbours. There are a small minority who do care and take steps to control the problem but they really are a minority.

Cat owners should be required to own a litter tray. I know a woman who had a cat who used her litter tray. This woman decided she was tired of dealing with cat litter and didn't like the smell so she chucked the tray out. This caused the cat to crap on her neighbour's garden. This neighbour now has to pick up the cat shit and as a result has refused to feed the cat when the woman goes away and basically relations are now very frosty. All because the cat owner did not want to deal with her own cat's shit and thought it would be ok for her neighbour to endure this instead.

Personally, I live in an area where houses have been tightly packed in by greedy developers. Between my neighbours they own 4 cats, who I saw crapping in my garden. I have paid for cat spikes along my fences, blocked up any holes under the fences, put extra planks on my garden gate bottom and top etc to try and keep these fucking bastards from shitting on the small area my kids can play in. I don't dare ever grow any vegetables because of cat shit. Prior to this, I was shovelling up a lot of cat shit every week and taking it to a ditch in a wheelbarrow. They still ruin my front garden flower beds so nobody in my family ever goes in the front garden. Fortunately it is tiny so not too much of a loss.

At the very least, cat owners should face an annual charge. What about the gloves I have to buy and then throw away to pick up their pets' turds, the plastic bags etc.

There are a lot of cat owners on this thread suggesting that nothing can be done. Yes, plenty can be done. Like not getting a cat or any more cats because it is antisocial to get a mobile shitting machine which your neighbours have to clear up after. And which generally doesn't even like you in the first place - if the cat finds someone with better food/more comfortable then it will dump you and live with them instead.

I think you should have just got a cat, pink and it would have scared all the others away!

Pink, what would you suggest cat owners do? I have a litter tray, which my cat uses, but it is entirely possible she craps in other people's gardens. What exactly should I do to prevent this?

We have spikes on top of the garden gates and an inward slanting trellis thing on the top of our fences and that seems to keep them out. They can't get out if they do get in so they tend not to venture in more than once.

I have two cats. Both roam freely. Both have been trained to use a purpose built outdoor latrine in my garden. I know they both use it every day.
I hated it when the local cats used to use my garden to shit in.
So when I got my own, I did as I have described above, trained them to use the latrine( it's very naice....has a roof, nice soft sand, fairy lights etc).
Cat owners should be more responsible for the mess their animals make. No, you can't follow them in and out of the neighbours gardens with a poop scoop and a poo bag, but you can make them a safe place to go in the corner of your garden, keep it nice and clean and encourage them to use it.

I think you'll find op that if cat owners had wanted a needy pet that they followed around then they would have got a dog.

My cat comes back inside to use the litter tray. Bastard.

When I stopped buying Go Cat Crunchy and Tender in an attempted economy drive, my cat did a big massive turd in the middle of the trampoline. It was like some sort of dirty protest. I started buying it again.

I showed my cats the petition. They laughed and said they were going to start a petition of their own. Sorry OP.

I do understand that cat shit is pretty grim, especially if it's not your cat, but I'm not sure what good a petition will do. Have you tried putting lemon rind down/ spraying lemon juice? They hate the smell of citrus. Or you can get sonic deterrents to scare them away.

Sounds good to me. Australia has some good laws about domestic cats iirc.

I have cats. Other cats poo in my garden. I simply clean it up and carry on with my day.

Yes, cat poo can contain dodgy germs. But given the sheer amount of litter tray cleaning I do I still manage to avoid this (and I'm far from OCD in terms of cleanliness).

I would recommend that, instead of starting some ridiculous petition, you start a training program for cats to teach them not to poo in people's gardens.

HTH.

This has amused me lots.

I did of course discuss it properly with my two cats but they declined to sign. Sorry OP.

Where do i sign?

I actually have a cat and he said he is a good boy and waits till he gets home for the littler tray! And my cats other friends are well behaved they don't do it in my garden Because I have little people in and my cats the boss!

I have four cats. Two boys and two girls. The girls use the litter trays provided. The boys refuse to and venture off outside somewhere to do their thing. I cannot hold them in the litter tray and tell them to have a shit.

If it helps, Boy cat 2 is a prolific hunter and is helping to keep the rat population down judging by the number of bodies we find outside the door.

A petition. Wow. That's powerful stuff. Cats everywhere will be shitting in their boots (or next door's garden).

Ah the good old "Cat shit causes blindness" argument.

No, just no.

Toxoplasmosis causes the blindness.
Toxoplasmosis is picked up from many many sources, poorly cooked poultry being the most common.

Picking it up from cat poo would involve eating the poo.
If you're worried about your kids, teach them to not eat poo.

I used to have a litter tray. Bastard cats refused to use it. Still I expect the OP will be pleased to know that one of my cats was run over a few months' ago, reducing the local cat outside poo population by one.

I used to not much care for cats. Then by a strange set of circumstances I acquired one. I used to get frustrated at the people in these threads who suggested that if you get a cat of your own, the local cats crapping in your garden would be a thing of the past. Turns out they were right. We've had no more problems with cat poo since we got our own.

And our cat is either model citizen or not very bright. She won't even pee outdoors, much less poo. We were out all afternoon and when we got back she was clawing at the back door. Opened it and she nearly knocked us off our feet to get to her litter tray. Then went straight back out.