Cats and grass issue

sec79

Hi all,
I had a new lawn laid recently. The front lawn has quite a few large areas of dead grass where it looks like cats have been weeing this burning the grass. What is the best way to sort this issue please? The front garden is very shaded so getting one of the solar power cat deterrents I'm not sure would work. The person who laid the grass has offered to replace the scorched areas for me, but if this is done I then don't want the same issue to occur in  other areas of the lawn. Thank you

Jeepers_Creepers

I guess all you can do is check out all the various cat deterrents, from odour-based to water spray. I think the latter is pretty certain to work

Solar-powered devices don't need direct sunlight to charge. They should be fine as long as they are triggered only for short periods, which they probably will - plenty of charge should build up for this.

Jeepers_Creepers

Won't these patches recover naturally? I wonder if this would ultimately be less obvious than a replacement patch?

(I don't know - just how toxic is cat wee?!)

PollyWollyDoodle

I’ve had cats all my life and never seen this. They usually prefer to wee on earth and in more secluded places. Are you sure it is cats causing this?  As you say it’s a front garden, is it possible that someone’s dog is wandering in and weeing?  

I think I would wait to see if it recovers rather than patching, and meanwhile try to identify the source of the problem. 

NeverTooLate

I would agree with not patching it. We have brown patches where our dogs have wee'd, eventually they become green again and are greener than the rest of the grass - something to do with the nitrogen in the urine.

Rosa_Damascena

Since when does wee pool in a perfect circle?

Methinks there is something else at play here within the soil itself, maybe a parasite? Time to get googling.

Eldi_Dos

Looks more like a fungal problem which can lead to surface being deprived of moisture. If you can get star head screwdriver and poke some drainage holes and scour the area's affected the healthy grass will fill in unsightly area's.

ispookie666

I doubt it is cat related. 
In our previous house, the garden used to be a toilet for all the neighbouring cats - other than poos, I have not seen similar patches.   As for deterring them, the cheapest option - Human urine (used to pee in a bottle and litter the grass and border in the evening).  second best, Water scarecrow - works a treat; it does require a bit of planning and making sure the people on the road and yourself does not get sprayed!  None of the other control methods worked for me

Swasterix

PollyWollyDoodle said:

I’ve had cats all my life and never seen this. They usually prefer to wee on earth and in more secluded places. Are you sure it is cats causing this?  As you say it’s a front garden, is it possible that someone’s dog is wandering in and weeing?  

I think I would wait to see if it recovers rather than patching, and meanwhile try to identify the source of the problem. 

Cats do wee/poo on grass. I was plagued with it in my last house. One of the local cats used to drop one on my lawn on an almost nightly basis - disgusting. I confirmed by using a wildlife camera. 

Jeepers_Creepers said:

I guess all you can do is check out all the various cat deterrents, from odour-based to water spray. I think the latter is pretty certain to work

Solar-powered devices don't need direct sunlight to charge. They should be fine as long as they are triggered only for short periods, which they probably will - plenty of charge should build up for this.

This is precisely what I did, and it did work. I picked one up from Amazon. Can’t remember how much it was, but it wasn’t expensive. It was battery powered and had a PIR detector on it. 

After installing it the problem stopped almost overnight. I left it in place for a few weeks just in case and then removed it. The problem did return months later so I reinstalled it again for a while. 

Ps. If you do this, try not to forget that it is there…. I did once or twice, much to the wife’s amusement!

pps. Don’t waste your time/money on the other gadgets and gizmos available. They don’t work. 

twopenny

That must be a large cat with an enormous bladder!

It could possibily be a female dog but still very close to a wall for a domestic animal. They like to have space around them for a quick exit. It could be fox marking its teritory

The centre is dead with a yellow ring around it. The pattern is linear wave which seems odd, especially the two neatly either side of the drain cover.

It looks a lot more like fungal effect. In which case cutting out and replacing those patches will probably still leave the disease in the ground - could be the soil on the turf or from your soil beneath it - and it will just recurr and spread.

I'd be inclined to partially cut and lift the two near the drain, have a poke around to see what's under the ground then replace.

Low air movement as there may by around a high wall can cause some infections because of a lack of air circulation.

sec79

thanks everyone for your comments. I only thought it was cats as we do have cats in the area who use our gardens to poo in. The grass has been down about 6/7 weeks now. My front garden is shaded, does have a wall in front of it and there are quite a few mushrooms growing in the grass. i will use my garden fork to poke some holes in the grass to try and improve the air circulation and rake out the dead grass to see if that helps. My grass previously was ridden with weeds but never had the dry grass problem.