End of my tether with the cats

[Cleaningismycardio]

Posting for traffic as I am out of options and hoping someone will have an idea of how to help me. I live in a lovely street but we have quite a few cats. They constantly use my garden as a toilet. I could cope with this if it were just in the soil, but it is all over my grass - back and front. Sometimes they also go on my path. Definitely cats as a dog would not be able to get through my gate into the back and the dogs here are never out without their owners. I have spent a small fortune on deterring them in humane ways. I have done the following so far: got an electronic sound sensor (they crap right in front of it), changed to plants recommended to deter (e.g. tons of lavender plants back and front), sprinkled coffee, peppercorns, shop bought cat repellent, have jars of vinegar dotted about, sponges soaked in oil dotted about, chicken wire over the grass, lion manure on grass and in soil. Nothing works and since I have started doing all the work to the front, this past 6 months they have now started to go on my back grass too!! No deterrents working there either. I have a child who can't play in their own garden and guinea pigs who will not be able to go out on the grass in the nice weather (the parasites in cat mess are dangerous to them). I am absolutely sick to the back teeth of cleaning up their mess, to the point it is actually starting to affect me - I actually just want to cry when I go and scoop it all up. At present I have 7 'deposits' in my small front garden and 6 at the back (possibly more in the soil), all in random places, not in one spot, but it is so soggy and wet I will have to wait until another frost for it to freeze before I can clean it. It is a modern estate so the gardens are roomy enough to play in but not huge so this amount of mess means they are out of bounds. Spraying cats with water is the only one I haven't tried because they come in the middle of the night.
My neighbour is an early riser and have chased them a few times about 5/6am. My non-cat owning neighbours have the same issue with mess, but it seems to be only me and next door who have it on our actual grass. Apparently there was never any bother until a neighbour took in a stray and it started messing on the grass. So sorry for the long post. Please help me!!!! I really don't know how much more I can take!

Foxes can easily climb a six foot fence
Could be cats, foxes, mink, badgers......If you get rid of one, the others will just move in and take over anyway.

Plus your garden is undoubtedly covered in bird shit which carries far more hideous diseases www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/61646#1

Better get scrubbing......

@eurochick I watched my neighbour's cat take a huge dump in my front garden and wander off without attempting to bury it. Couldn't even chase it away as I was on a zoom work call at the time. I have taken to placing several wooden sticks in my plant pots to stop her horrible cats shitting in my plants but it's a bit more tricky with the grass and garden.

@MissMarpleDarling

My cat will go outside the back door into my own garden, stoop on my grass and have a poo then come back in. They say cats don't shit in their own garden but they do so getting your own cat wont necessarily fix it 🙈

yeah - I wish my 5 were like mumsnet cats - all of mine poo in our garden - little twats!

I found a well aimed super soaker with orange juice in worked quite well.

2 or 3 squirts and they never came back.

Cats pooping on grass seems odd to me. I have cats and invariably they like to do their business in places they can dig and cover over. To stop them crapping in my flower beds (nothing worse than digging through a nice soft bit when planting) I put a low veg box frame from B&Q (2 feet square) behind my shed and filled it with compost. It actually seems to have done the trick. They happily go in there now and leave my flower beds in peace. I have seen other cats using it too , but I guess that's what you want. You still have to clean it occasionally, but as it's open beneath, any poop you dont see to bin just biodegrades and the worms get in to break it down.

People mainly cat owners always claim its foxes. Cat poo and fox poo don't look (or smell) as much alike as people seem to think and, if viewed side by side, it's easy to tell which is which.

If you can, you could put rubber nobbles along the top of your fence. You can buy them in strips and nail them on. They won't hurt the cats because they're rubber but it makes the top of the fence uncomfortable to walk on so it deters them. You can also get rubber matting for flower beds, it has holes in for the plants to grow up through and for water to get in but too small for cats to be able to dig. Wooden skewers pushed into the ground around flower beds can deter them too as it makes the area too narrow for them to get through.

Rosemary oil can be used to deter them, it can be bought as an essential oil and is really cheap. Sprinkled around the perimeter of the garden and in any of their favourite fouling spots.

We've got the sonic deterrents and they work really well, I've got one in each corner of the garden for full coverage and since getting them we've had one cat come in but it didn't shit and it very quickly left. I also blocked up all the little gaps around the bottom of the fence so there is no way in other than over the fence. Neighbour, who owns five fucking cats none of which shit in their own garden, had a grumble that her cats won't know how to get home if they can't cut across my garden

OP - my garden has 6ft fences on all sides and I'm regularly visited by a family of three foxes; they trip my motion-sensor security camera.

Next door had a cracked drain and then a rat problem. My home office faces the garden and I used to see rats coming over the fence multiple times a day. Not seen any since the foxes started to visit (hurray!)

If literally none of the deterents that would always work on at least one cat are working for you, I don’t think you have a cat problem.

I would think that a motion triggered sprinkler would be your best best; only a tiny proportion of cats love water so it should hopefully be effective for you.

Have a look at the Oscilot cat fence. More attractive than netting. It's supposed to keep cats in but presumably would also keep them out!
oscillot.com.au/pages/what-is-oscillot

Sonic cat repellers work on foxes too.

Douse them with water. I have two cats and they're both litter users but I would have no problem of a neighbour soaked my cat to prevent it from offending.💦💦 💦💦💦

We have that cat fencing shown to keep our lot in. But it is also remarkably effective at keeping stray cats out! Not since one in the garden since it was installed 8 years ago. We get the occasional lurker on the fence, but that's it.

There's also the option of electric fencing, BTW. (I may say this as a horse owner :) ) But it can be expensive. Here's the firm I use for the ponies:

www.electric-fence.co.uk/cat.html

@FoxyTheFox

People mainly cat owners always claim its foxes. Cat poo and fox poo don't look (or smell) as much alike as people seem to think and, if viewed side by side, it's easy to tell which is which.

If you can, you could put rubber nobbles along the top of your fence. You can buy them in strips and nail them on. They won't hurt the cats because they're rubber but it makes the top of the fence uncomfortable to walk on so it deters them. You can also get rubber matting for flower beds, it has holes in for the plants to grow up through and for water to get in but too small for cats to be able to dig. Wooden skewers pushed into the ground around flower beds can deter them too as it makes the area too narrow for them to get through.

Rosemary oil can be used to deter them, it can be bought as an essential oil and is really cheap. Sprinkled around the perimeter of the garden and in any of their favourite fouling spots.

We've got the sonic deterrents and they work really well, I've got one in each corner of the garden for full coverage and since getting them we've had one cat come in but it didn't shit and it very quickly left. I also blocked up all the little gaps around the bottom of the fence so there is no way in other than over the fence. Neighbour, who owns five fucking cats none of which shit in their own garden, had a grumble that her cats won't know how to get home if they can't cut across my garden

I thought it was other people's cats using my back garden, as my own cats are far too full of their own self importance to lower themselves to risking a cold bottom (seriously - they go out and then come in to use the litter tray).

It was only when I looked out one night to see a fox strolling along the prikkastrips a neighbour had put up, jumping down into my garden, tipping some plant pots over, taking a giant dump in the vegetable patch and then jumping back up onto the prikkastrips that I realised just how easy it is for a fox to get in. Before that, I had thought it was an unneutered tomcat.

Now I'm very clear on the difference between cat and fox faeces, now I've had the very intense experience of cleaning up both the back garden and a litter tray. And that prikkastrips clearly don't work for foxes (or cats; I've seen plenty of cats walk along them without any difficulty as well since then).

@Bakeachocolatecake2day

I am 99% sure it won't be a cat doing most of this. It'll most likely be a fox - they are territorial and will crap to mark territory. This is why they are coming back over and over and re-making the same space.

You may be on the edge of two fox territories, which is making it doubly bad.

Cats will occasionally poo in the open but only if stressed or ill, and not usually repeatedly.

My cat definitely would - she'd also look my in the eye defiantly while she did it, whilst being sprayed by the motion activated sprinkler. She was a delight 😁

@Bakeachocolatecake2day

I am 99% sure it won't be a cat doing most of this. It'll most likely be a fox - they are territorial and will crap to mark territory. This is why they are coming back over and over and re-making the same space.

You may be on the edge of two fox territories, which is making it doubly bad.

Cats will occasionally poo in the open but only if stressed or ill, and not usually repeatedly.

This is rubbish , we used to have a neighbour with 3 cats and one repeatedly shat on our lawn , no attempt to bury it and it definitely wasn’t foxes because 1) I can tell the difference 2) we caught it in the act on a few occasions . We resorted to keeping a super soaker by the door to spray at it but it still came back . Fortunately she moved otherwise I may have had to resort to letting my terrier have a go which I was loathe to do as I do actually like cats and he doesn’t .

Water is your best bet i have indoor cats so I know its not mine 🤣 things my cat love is running water my one cat is unphased by tinfoil and will actually carry a sheet to scare his brothers he is also unbothered by citrus and lay on the orange peel that was by the Christmas tree he is a very good example of a pita cat but he is very bothered by random squirts of water

I also reccomend plastic carrier bags on sticks if you can find the cheap ones and some sticks a windy night it will scare cats and foxes away

You need snacks
For the stakeout..
And a garden hose.
Few nights in a row.
My ndn kept an old Fairy bottle with water on her sill. Dcat just had to see her lift the bottle and he ran past her wall!!

Do you know anyone with a dog? My mum swears by putting up little sacks of dog hair to keep away foxes, and it keeps away cats too. You need as much dog hair as you can get ( good and stinky, not washed) and put in in old tights and knot it to make little soggy pomanders then hang them round your garden. Or maybe if you had a dog owning friend they would let their dog piss on a few spots on your garden? Cats will hate the smell. Dog piss not great, admittedly, but better than cat poo?

Had a previous neighbour once complain that my dogs have the run of my own garden when they like, as a few times he said he's seen his cat running for its life terrified from my garden, and cats should be able to explore. Bonkers

Can you get hold of a night camera thing to see whether it's foxes or cats? I think fox poo smells quite different to cat poo.

I'd be red-hot at removing poo and sprinkling something strong-smelling where they went - if cats can smell poo, they think it's a place to poo.

I fixed this issue by giving a neighbour's cat the odd treat when they came in our garden, it was only one cat and you're not really supposed to feed other people's cats but it did the job, I think the cat started associating us with food rather than crapping and started to shit in its own garden.

I had the same issue at an old house on am estate. No foxes in area, and if I left a downstairs window open and went upstairs, one particular un-neutered male would come in and spray on my furniture. I also ended up with a flea problem which cost me a fortune to sort. I hated it so much. And I never found anything that worked.

@HeidiHaughton

Call the local animal cruelty charity and tell them there are strays which need to be removed and destroyed. People cannot let their animals wander like this, perhaps having them killed will make them think twice about doing it again.

You really think any animal charity will come out and 'destroy' cats for this!?

Well the charity will have the cats, and they'll be well away from the garden they're pooing in. And the owners will be at the loss of them.

@HeidiHaughton

Call the local animal cruelty charity and tell them there are strays which need to be removed and destroyed. People cannot let their animals wander like this, perhaps having them killed will make them think twice about doing it again.

My god what an evil thought! I always thought it was only the type of people who go on to be serial killers who were evil enough to harm animals in this way.

OP it does sound like an extreme problem. Don't dismiss foxes, we got a security camera for other reasons and were amazed to find that we were visited by about 10-12 foxes a night. Especially true if you're on a new build estate that used to be countryside/woods as the foxes would have been there before the houses and had nowhere to go. They are shy - you won't often see them. Google fox poo as it looks quite a bit different to cat poo and would explain why cat deterrents aren't working.