How can I encourage my cats to poop in the flowerbeds rather than right in the middle of the garden?

[LittleWeePickle]

Are there any herbs or anything I can plant which they would want to poop near, hence encouraging them not to use the lawn?

We have a smallish garden, and for every blade of grass there is a nice cat turd.

Walking from the back door to the shed is a total minefield. Our 3 elderly cats (all approximately 14 years old) make no attempt to bury or conceal their doings and just lay logs in the middle of the grass.

Garden is now totally out of bounds to our 19mo DS - and I'd like him to be able to play outdoors when nicer weather comes, along with our new baby

Any suggestions?

Urgh!
Cats, and old cats especially, are lazy poopers. Once they find somewhere that suits them it is extremely difficult to move them elsewhere. As they can't be arsed to dig any more the flowerbed will hold no charms. You will have to make the grass extremely inhospitable. Can you lay a barrier of something prickly like holly over their fave spots, with a nice easy path through to the flower beds? Supplement prickly stuff with smelly stuff like Get Off My Garden.

and move ALL the existing poo off - dig it in to where you want them to start pooing. And hose down where they have been pooing to start getting rid of the enticing lavatorial smell.

Good answer! Thank you for that.

As for being lazy, my wickedest cat likes to just lie in our her bed and throw up - and just sits and stares at it! How lazy is that!

I think I will get a barbed wire mesh and lay it over the lawn!

Now to work out who is gonna remove (on a daily basis...!) all the glistening, gleaming turds which lie there, like little landmines! I am 39 weeks pregnant now - so it surely can't be l'il ole me can it?

I hope this brings our turd graveyard garden back to life!