cats in my garden grrrrrrr

GwylimT

Lion poo works quite well, when we had cats I used to put it on our vegetable plot to keep them off it and it stopped them going near it at all. You can also get small dark pebbles that are uncomfortable on their feet but due to the colour you cannot see it on the soil, good for drainage and keeping slugs away too.

charliemonkeyface

jellyhead wrote: »

After reading this thread, I checked my son's sandpit because he'd left the lid off, but I thought it didn't matter because it wasn't going to rain. Oh dear I've thrown all the sand away and cleaned it out, cleaned the spades and the moulds but I don't have any more sand.

My neighbour actually complained while I was cleaning it out that the sand from my child's sandpit has been going through his fence and making a mess in his garden! I told him it's his cats using it as a litter tray that's making the sand go into his garden.

He just asked why we don't have a sandpit cover ... honestly, these people they know full well that their cats are messing in other people's gardens and they just shrug their shoulders. They seem to think it's our responsibility to keep them out of our gardens, and that their cats can just keep messing anywhere where the house owner isn't stopping them. So that will be my 93 year old neighbour's garden then, if I manage to successfully stop them from messing in my garden.

This was exactly my point, i don't know whats worse, cats crapping where they please or their irresponsible owners thinking it's no big deal and we should all get over it.
If cat !!!! doesn't stink why is most cat litter advertised as odour neutralizing and toilet flushable.

bitemebankers

vroombroom wrote: »

Um I seriously doubt I have thousands of animals in front my garden - its tiny.:cool:

Of course you have. Most of them might be microscopic, but they're still animals and they still crap in your garden. Collectively they produce far more poo than one or two neighbourhood cats.

FatVonD

charliemonkeyface wrote: »

This was exactly my point, i don't know whats worse, cats crapping where they please or their irresponsible owners thinking it's no big deal and we should all get over it.
If cat !!!! doesn't stink why is most cat litter advertised as odour neutralizing and toilet flushable.

It's not that we don't care, it's embarrassing, but that there's nothing we can do about it.

I would personally love my cats never to stray from my garden, not in case they poo in someone else's but in case they get run over. When I moved into my current house I paid £1,000+ to get 6ft high PVC fencing that the cats couldn't climb down the longest length of the garden. To be on the safe side I then put another 2ft of plastic trellis on top of that. There is already a 6ft wall at the end and the house is on the third side which left one weak point, 6ft wide wooden gates.

I covered the gates with plastic trellis to a height of 8ft and made tubes of chicken wire round the posts (kind of like you see round young trees.) Within 10 minutes of being let into the garden one of mine scaled the trellis in spiderman-like fashion to the top of the gates and then squeezed her body through one of the diamond shapes in the trellis :cool:

Cats are different to dogs (you heard it here first folks ) to complain that they can't be trained like dogs is like me getting irate that my cat can't talk just because my neighbour's parrot can :rotfl:

KxMx

People expect owners to keep their cats out of other people's gardens, but won't take sensible and reasonable steps such as a sandpit cover or netting over pond?

Cats are not the only things that will use sand/go fishing after all, other true wildlife will.

Sounds to me like cutting noses off to spite faces!

If someone with a pond or sandpit came to me with a proven complaint about my cat, I would be happy to work with them, but equally be expecting they are already taking steps themselves such as sandpit cover/net.

delain

charliemonkeyface wrote: »

This was exactly my point, i don't know whats worse, cats crapping where they please or their irresponsible owners thinking it's no big deal and we should all get over it.
If cat !!!! doesn't stink why is most cat litter advertised as odour neutralizing and toilet flushable.

Toilet flushable cat litter is a new one on me!

It's either made of clay or sawdust compressed into pellets? Not something I'd want to inflict on my loo anyway. I mean you could take the cat poo out of the tray and flush it I suppose but otherwise I'm stumped :think:

jellyhead

KxMx wrote: »

People expect owners to keep their cats out of other people's gardens, but won't take sensible and reasonable steps such as a sandpit cover or netting over pond?

Cats are not the only things that will use sand/go fishing after all, other true wildlife will.

Sounds to me like cutting noses off to spite faces!

If someone with a pond or sandpit came to me with a proven complaint about my cat, I would be happy to work with them, but equally be expecting they are already taking steps themselves such as sandpit cover/net.

I normally have a cover on the sandpit, besides which I wasn't complaining to the neighbour about the cat poo - he was complaining to me about sand coming through the fence into his garden!

They are only kittens, and since my neighbour has stopped using a litter tray they are looking for a replacement litter tray. I know it's not guaranteed, but if my neighbour carried on providing a litter tray, as many cat owners do, then his cats would probably use it instead of my garden. It's one thing for a cat who has a litter tray they regularly use at home to use a neighbour's garden occasionally but quite another for the cat owner to stop using a litter tray altogether and expect their neighbours to deal with the whole lot.

When I had a cat she used the litter tray every day. I realise that she probably went elsewhere too, but at least I dealt with the majority of the mess myself. My parents always had a litter tray when they kept cats.

KxMx

jellyhead wrote: »

I normally have a cover on the sandpit, besides which I wasn't complaining to the neighbour about the cat poo - he was complaining to me about sand coming through the fence into his garden!

They are only kittens, and since my neighbour has stopped using a litter tray they are looking for a replacement litter tray. I know it's not guaranteed, but if my neighbour carried on providing a litter tray, as many cat owners do, then his cats would probably use it instead of my garden. It's one thing for a cat who has a litter tray they regularly use at home to use a neighbour's garden occasionally but quite another for the cat owner to stop using a litter tray altogether and expect their neighbours to deal with the whole lot.

When I had a cat she used the litter tray every day. I realise that she probably went elsewhere too, but at least I dealt with the majority of the mess myself. My parents always had a litter tray when they kept cats.

I can well see your point in your case.

Even providing a loose patch of dirt in his garden with some litter on top would be better than just expecting them to go elsewhere.

I never agree with cat owners who withdraw a litter tray entirely.

If they find litter trays so disagreeable they shouldn't have cats in the first place.

As a cat owner myself I find owners like that give us all a bad name. I've said on other threads if my neighbours were finding my cat a nuisance and could provide proof, I would pay for new plants etc or endorse and encourage them to throw water over her if she goes in their garden and they don't want her there.

And don't get me started on people who have multiple cats and let them all roam! I believe some earlier said a neighbour has 11- that is appalling for the neighbours and for the cats when the owner inevitably becomes unable to care for them all adequately.

pigpen

My cats don't have a litter tray.. they never used it once they discovered the outside, they preferred a certain corner of the garden so that is their place.. I wouldn't mind having one if it was used but the only critters that seemed to go in it were the toddlers to flick the litter everywhere. I've had 11 cats over the years and only 1 has ever required a continued litter tray.

I, in fact, seem to be the house all the neighbourhood cats come to visit!! I have 6 at the moment.. 4 of which were females which were impossible to rehome.. I REALLY didn't want the youngest 2 yet they are the least trouble of them all. 4 barely leave the house and if they do they venture no further than the woodpile next door to bring home mice.

vroombroom

Evening

Just thought I would give you an update. I wanted to try the cheapest option first and being a week till pay day, we improvised on the bum spikes - Poundland Kebab Skewers - 59p for 100 thank you to who previously suggested them :money:) . Got two bags of them and planted them on both side of the garden.

No poops, but plenty strange looks from the neighbours:D