How do i stop the cats pooing in the garden?

[Saltire]

Not my cats, we have a dog. Next doors cat, and another one are pooing in the garden, how can I stop it. I don't mind picking up my dogs poo, but why should I have to pick this up too.

I will watch with interest as we have the same problem and its really annoying! Have tried gel crstal things which i got from a garden centre but did not work for long.

This is excellent stuff. We bought it from our local garden centre. We have two cats of our own and I got fed up with them crapping wherever they liked when we had given them an outdoor litter tray. Plus the neighbourhood cats use my front garden as a toilet too . We scatter this every couple of weeks. Works a treat

Silent Roar pellets which are scented with lion's urine so cats think they are entering a lion's domain!
here

My SIL uses one of those sonic alarms and says it keeps cats off her lawn.

My sister fixed carpet gripper rods along the top of her fences to stop them coming into the garden.

Do they always poo in one place, or is it all over? If it's in one place there is a number of things you can try - cats are lazy, so if you make it difficult to go to the toilet, they'll find somewhere else to do it! Coarse stones that cats can't dig through is the easiest thing (not gravel consistency as that would attract them, but the big chips). You don't need a thick covering, just enough to make it difficult or uncomfortable to dig. You could also put down some plastic trellis/netting from the garden centre, which will make it impossible to dig (you could cover it with a thin layer of soil to hide it if you wanted to). Those cheap plastic forks stuck in the ground (fork end up) every few inches are also good, as it makes it uncomfortable for cats to linger and they're difficult to walk around. You could also weave string between them to really make it difficult (you could use garden canes instead of forks - watch your dog's eyes though if you do this). All these deterrents should only need to be left in place for a few weeks until they've found somewhere else to go. It's also worth putting one of your dog's poos in the area they use, which should put them off.

Please don't use gripper rods. The cats are going to jump up on the fence at least once before realising they're there, and it could cause all kinds of damage. I'd be pretty annoyed (understatement!) if my cat came home bleeding and I saw our neighbour had done something like that, they'd certainly be getting the vets bills at the very least - probably a visit from the police as well! I'm pretty sure under the new animal protection laws using something harmful as a deterrent is illegal, and gripper rods are about as harmful as you can get, short of putting down broken glass. It could also damage other wildlife such as birds, squirrels etc.

MrsL123, I know it sounds harsh, but it really didn't harm them and certainly not the birds or squirrels etc as they're much lighter, things like this just make it uncomfortable for the cats so puts them off a bit.

I've never myself found anything that really works to keep them out. I wouldn't turn my garden into a junk yard to prevent it or leave my dogs poo laying about. Some of the sonic things can be quite expensive too. I think they are attracted to areas of bare earth in particular so planting up any bare pathes might help?

We don't have any pets and DH once picked up 17 poos in our garden. All cats' poos. Yuck.

We bought repel-all from our pet shop and sprayed it across the top of the fence. That worked well - then we got a big dog and now all the local cats avoid us like the plague!!

If there's one particular place put a load of wooden kebab sticks in the soil - they'll soon find somewhere else!

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one MMM As annoying as cats pooing in your garden is, I think there's a huge difference between an uncomfortable deterrent and one that's likely to injure. Regardless of how they're positioned or attached, carpet grippers are basically hundreds of sharp nails sticking out of a piece of wood, so I wouldn't want to subject any animal to that (especially as I've stood on them myself in the past and know how nasty they can be!). They might not cause any damage one way because the spikes are angled, but the other way, they could tear into the cat's paw pads and cause real damage - especially when the cat is hanging onto the fence trying to free itself. And what if a child was trying to look over the fence to see where their ball had gone? Not to be advised IMO, especially when there are safer options. These are special strips you can put along the top of fences that have rounded 'spikes' on, to deter cats without the risk of causing them (or anyone else) harm.

cats are repelled by citrus

A neighbour of mine also used to put rose bush branches on his lawn as a deterrent - cats don't like prickly things if they want to squat