Any way I can stop cats from messing up my garden?

Andrew_Ryan_89

When my mum told me I had to put spikes on my fences to stop cats coming is as they messed up my brothers garden so much they could no longer use it, I laughed it off. No way are you going to have so many cats crapping in your garden that it becomes that significant of a problem.

Forward to the present and now approaching summer where I now have to mow the lawn. Today, twice I had to big up cat dropping from the garden. Good thing they were dry but the smell was quite noticeable. I recently just moved and have yet to use the garden. I only mow the lawn out of respect for the neighbors and feed the fish. When I fully settle in I plan to make use of it, but being slightly "OCD" about feces or anything to with a toilet to be honest, having to deal with that on a regular basis will be quite off putting.

Most of my neighbors are old, and walking to the bus stop in the morning, you would think every house has a cat. They are a fixture in every other window and you see them walking around everywhere. So domesticated they are, one used to sit on our doormat and wouldn't even flinch as we walked in and out of the house.

To the point, is there anyway of stopping cats coming into our garden? Especially crapping there. If I have pea-pebbles instead of grass, mow regularly etc., would that have any affect?

iammumtoone

Get your own cat

Person_one

iammumtoone wrote: »

Get your own cat

Or a dog or two!

ManuelG

One thing you can do is offer them a nice freshly dug boarder instead of your lawn. Cats tend to dig and bury their turds, so offering them the space to do so would save your lawn...

Here's some stuff from Suttons.

And dig up all the cat nip you've planted.

Ebe_Scrooge

Are you sure it's cats ? Cats don't usually just poo on the lawn, they're usually pretty fussy about burying it. Sure it's not foxes ?

southcoastrgi

I was gonna say the same as Ebe, cats like soft ground where they can dig it in, plus not trying to be rude how close to the ground is a cats bum do you really think they are going to sit there with grass sticking up their a*se, cat poo doesn't really smell after a while either (I know I've got two) I bet it's foxes

ManuelG

The only reason I hesitated in going the whole hog on the burying thing is because my old gent (19, I think) ended up too feeble to dig, so he gave up trying in his later years and just went straight on the lawn!

Until we offered him a nice new freshly dug (each morning, by me!) boarder...

That being said, no way he'd have been able to scale a fence if there was one around the property...

Preshy

I know it will sound uncouth, but I was told by a gardener when I was a child the only thing that stopped cats was to urinate on your boarder. Just once. As that deters them knowing a new teritory. I've never needed to do it, but maybe worth a try? Though I'd use a vessle yo carry it in from bathroom, as don't want to expose yourself.

REEN

Not all cats bury. No foxes round here but plenty of poop.
http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/why-does-my-cat-not-cover-her-poop

Ebe_Scrooge

A slightly off-the-wall, but natural, method for deterring cats - if you happen to live anywhere near a zoo, see if you can scrounge a few shovels of lion dung and put that on your garden. Apparently the smell scares the cats off. Of course, you've then got lion poo instead of cat poo, but at least you can place it somewhere out of the way, and not right on your lawn.

moneyistooshorttomention

Preshy wrote: »

I know it will sound uncouth, but I was told by a gardener when I was a child the only thing that stopped cats was to urinate on your boarder. Just once. As that deters them knowing a new teritory. I've never needed to do it, but maybe worth a try? Though I'd use a vessle yo carry it in from bathroom, as don't want to expose yourself.

That sounds like a realistically usable method - and free too.

Does it make any difference which sex the person it comes from is? As I've gathered before that the constituent "ingredients" can be a bit different, dependant on sex of person concerned.