Bonnie,

I here ya!! I agree and I SO get tired of picking up after for others...they don't change. Even if you let them know that by letting their pet roam, their pets s**t is everywhere. Doesn't matter to them in the first place or they would be out there picking it up.

Doesn't Skybird have a remedy? Remember cats were going in her yard? I'll bet she does have a way to deter them.

J

The people letting their cats out are dim bulbs and cannot be reasoned with, IME.

I'll never forget one of my coworkers some years ago told me she just got a call from her husband who was in the garage with the door cracked, using the .22 to shoot the neighbor's cats. Why was he shooting cats? Because they refused to accommodate their wishes to keep the cats out of their yard, and they were concerned for their two young children.

I also lived in a house where the neighbor's cats were killing fish out of the pond. The owner was very bleeding-heart and I finally convinced her to get a live trap and take them to the SPCA. After 3-4 incidences where she took the cats back next door and received violent threats about trapping something ON HER PROPERTY (I'm not afraid to call these people morons), she wised up and took the cats to the SPCA, even the replacement ones until the morons got a clue.

Lastly, I had a fence around my property in Sacto and used my blackberry trimming on top of the fence, and liquidambar seed pods in my beds, in addition to mousetraps, repellent, etc. I spent a lot of money keeping these environmentally destructive, bird population-reducing useless vermin away.

Bottom line: I've stopped being Mr Nice Guy and warn anyone letting their cats run wild that they run the risk of losing them if I catch it on my property. Burying cats does not take long at all, and is good fert if you use a biodegradable wrapper, and SPCA often loans live traps for free. Your neighbor will have to have the cat sterilized and pay a fee to get the cat back.

HTH.

Dan

Killing cats out of concern for their young children? What, were the cats going to eat the kids?? Gimme a break.

No faster to make an enemy of a neighbor than to kill their pets. I'm thankful I have never had neighbors like you Dan.

I here ya, Bonnie!!

I'm tired of it too. I don't know how to make people understand that wandering pets doesn't just mean poop they'll never see, know about or have to pick up but that is also means poop under your shoe or in your flowers or even on your doorstep! If they cared, their pets wouldn't be wandering.

Although, to be fair, with cats it is not the same as with dogs. Yes, there is poop but there is also the innocent suspicion that your cat poops in the box, not the neighbor's flowers. So, I'm sure it isn't as blatant as it is with dog owners.

I don't know how to discourage them but I think Skybird knows how to discourage the cats!! Didn't she say that a ways back? I think she kept the area of repeat offenses overly damp. Right?

Wish I knew. Luckily, our neighbor's cat only eats the catmint and doesn't do anything else. Although, we and she suspect it is the reason we have LOTS of bird feathers here and there.

At least you were able to rant!

:D :)

So far, my deterents for the cats are pretty much a failure. There was one area that they kept using, so I stuck some wooden skewers in the ground so that they couldn't get in there to potty, so they just used one of my other beds. There was another spot they were using, and they dug up some newly planted sprouts while trying to bury their pile, so I placed some large rocks around the sprouts ... they just went in another bed. So you see I can keep them out of one area, but I don't have enough rocks or sticks to cover every speck of dirt. I guess once my garden beds are completely filled in with plants, they won't have anywhere to go, but as long as there is an open patch of dirt, the cats will use it.

I read somewhere to put orange peels out, that cats don't like the smell, but just like the rocks and skewers, I don't have enough of them to cover all of the open ground, and it only works while the smell of the peel is fresh.

Jennifer, I'm sure you're right that the neighbor's probably don't even realize their cat is doing it, but it is awfully annoying.

Bonnie,
Would one of those motion activated sprinklers be an option? I'd think a quick spray of water would deter them.

So, we are having router troubles and my post did not post. Became frustrated, fixed the problem, posted.

Now, there are two posts from me!! That is my rant.

Grrr

J

Amy, I think that might work if it was just one area of the garden that was affected, but those attach to a hose, so I don't think it would work for multiple beds.

No faster to make an enemy of a neighbor than to kill their pets.

Actually, it is faster to disregard the wishes of your neighbor to stop your cats from stinking up your yard. Because that precipitates the second action, which comes before trapping or eradicating the cat.

I'm thankful I have never had neighbors like you Dan.

Note what I said my strategies were/are (as opposed to what I condone)

But, yes, going to the pound/SPCA and paying to get a cat back again and again tends to make one have a lighter wallet, and as a consequence unneighborly to the person making one pay that money.

Dan

I use a motion activated sprinkler (Scarecrow brand) to help train the wandering dogs in the neighborhood. It seems to work. They learn that my front yard is not a comfortable place to wander into. The backyard is fenced, so no dogs get in, but the neighborhood cats do. We do a number of things to keep them under some degree of control. Keeping the soil moist in their favorite spots helps, as does placing sticks and pieces of chicken wire/wire fencing about. We scatter dried hot pepper flakes (we buy them cheap - in bulk). The Scarecrow sprinkler is also a good thing to throw in to keep the cats from finding our little fenced retreat too welcoming (no dogs, good bird hunting).

One other thing we are now doing - providing two clean cat litter boxes on opposite sides of the house/gardens. The boxes are in spots the neighborhood cats like to use already (under the eaves of our roof in protected, out of the way spots). The soil is always dry in those spots, so the cats seem to head to those areas. While I don't relish cleaning the litter boxes it is better than finding cat waste while digging in our soil. (Do you know what I find worse than finding cat poop in the garden? Not being able to find it - I hate those times when I can smell cat waste, but can't find where it is. Yuck!

Here is a link that might be useful: scarecrow sprinkler video

I have a $1 plastic toy shovel and scoop & fling the cat poop into my neighbor's yard. Theirs are the only cats I've ever had to chase out. I try to aim for their walkway and front steps. I want a super soaker for the cats and the idiots that speed through the neighborhood with the bass thumping and windows down :-)

Jen

Fling it back into the neighbors yard? I like that idea, LOL!

The super soaker wouldn't work for me, since the cats aren't stupid enough to come in my yard while I'm out there.

Ive found a couple things that help, Jennifer, but still havenÂt found any way to keep them from pooping all over my front lawn!

I probably shouldnÂt even be posting here, because this is a BIG TIME pet peeve of mine! I did a LONG post on a thread a few years ago, and I searched for it, but canÂt find it. IÂm not even sure it was on RMG. I think it might have been on the Perennials Forum when I was still posting there, but it was a long thread with (sometimes vicious) rants from both people who have a problem with "other peopleÂs" cats, and the "other people" who think they have a right to let their cats roam far and wide! IÂm one of the first of those two! I believe people who have cats should be required to control them and clean up after them the same way people who have dogs are required to do! IÂd say more-----but IÂm going to try to be civil!!! But I truly donÂt understand why cats should be exempt from "owner responsibility!"

The neighbors right next to me, with whom I get along very well, have one indoor kitty and one outdoor one. Every now and then the indoor one escapes and has apparently taken a liking to hiding under my back deckÂwhich is a total maze of scrap lumber! Whenever it happens they come right over to get him, and I donÂt have any problem at all with that, tho I donÂt have a clue what theyÂd do if the cat ever decided it didnÂt want to come back out! ThereÂs no way in the world they could crawl under to get it! (I have warned them that I occasionally put D-con under there to be sure thereÂs not mice living under there!) And then thereÂs their outdoor kitty who roams everywhere! I think thatÂs the one who does most of the pooping in my front yard, tho I have seen a couple other ones roaming at times. I get SO tired of having to pick up "other peopleÂs" poop! I picked up enough of my own poop when I had a dog! If I donÂt pick it up, it gets all over my lawn mower wheelsÂand my feetÂwhen I cut the grass!

The first full summer I lived here it was even worse! It took me a year to figure out that the tiny pond thatÂs in my front yard was the nighttime watering hole for cats from far and wide! Once I figured that out, I covered it with chicken wire, and that got rid of a few of them! Looks great!!!

Then, last spring, the neighbor kids on the other side decided the bare soil under the pine in my front yard was a great sand box! Once they started digging in it and loosened up the soil, the catsÂlots of catsÂdecided it was their own private litter box. Big mounds of dirt and sh** were building up under it. Several times I cleaned up several grocery bags of dirt and sh**! I was absolutely determined I was not going to keep doing that all summer, so I first tried dumping bottles of cayenne pepper on the soil surface after I had cleaned it up. I got the cheap kind you can get for 50 cents a bottle at dollar stores. The surface of the soil was completely red a few times, and it worked for a few days, but not for long! It would blow or wash away, and theyÂd be back!

At that point, and madder than ever, I decided to go back to something I had used in the pastÂas Jennifer has already mentioned! If you keep the soil wet, the cats will stay away. They want nice dry "litter" to dig in! I set a little sprinkler under the tree, and ran it long enough to wet the top couple inches whenever it dried out. That kept both the cats and the kids out of there! Once the surface had hardened enough again, I was able to leave it dry out, and the cats went back to using the grass!

I never have found a way to keep them off of the grass! IÂve dumped pepper on the places where theyÂve pooped, but they just move to a different spot. I wonder if you can buy cayenne by the half-yard!!!

At one point I was considering a nuclear weapon, but I was afraid that any cats not destroyed in the initial blast might survive the radiation, mutate, and begin procreating exponentially!

Seriously, from things I've found other people reporting online, I do believe a motion detector sprinkler would work. IÂve considered it, but have never gotten around to getting oneÂand they need to be left connected to a charged water line all the timeÂwhich I hate to do when IÂm out of town, just in case anything ever broke! A couple times when I happened to look out the window (usually after dark) and see a cat on the front lawn, I ran down in the basement and turned the sprinkler system on for a few seconds! By the time I came back up and looked again, the cat was GONE! This year I donÂt even have the sprinkler system turned on yet!

I"ve also read about orange scent working, and somewhere I read that the "orange cleaner" worked, so I got a bottle and sprayed where they had pooped on the lawn, and, as with the pepper, they just went somewhere else. And that orange cleaner stuff isnÂt cheap!

So I guess for the garden, my best recommendation, aside from the motion sensor sprinkler type thing, would be to keep the surface wet enough to deter the catsÂbut depending on what was planted there, youÂd need to be careful to not be keeping it too wet all the time. I think a thick layer of bark mulch would be a fairly good deterrent. IÂve never had any poop in my flower beds which are all mulched.

I do occasionally find poop in my BACK yard, and when I do, I know itÂs from the first neighbor I mentioned. Then I use the fling-it-back-over-the-fence system!!! (But I make sure IÂm not seen Âcause I want to stay friends with them!) But I really do think people should be mindful of where their cats are and "what" theyÂre doing!

In that first long post of years ago I told the story of the (feral, or once tame?) Cat who was living in my backyard at the last house! IÂve always fed the birds, and this cat had made my yard his own private diner! I put boards in the window wells to keep him from sleeping there, and shoved some wood under a juniper he was sleeping under, trying to get it to go away. At the time I was commuting to San Fran, and was usually gone for 5 or 6 days at a time. One time, in winter, I got back home and found the kitty dead, and frozen stiff, in a perennial bed under one of my main bird feeders. The point I was trying to make, to all the people in that post who thought their cats had a right to be and were enjoying their life outdoors on their own, was that that cat had a terrible life! It appeared to have been tame at some point, so somebody probably left it out and it just disappeared and tried to survive on its own. If the "owners" had truly cared about it, they would have kept it inside where it was safe and fed and taken care of. Leaving cats roam outside is NOT a kind thing to do. In my opinion, people who donÂt want to have a cat in their house shouldnÂt have a cat!

And IÂm going to end this post the way Bonnie started hers! I am not a cat hater! IÂm more of a dog person than a cat person, but I love all animals. When I was a PaulinoÂs, we adopted and tamed two feral kitties. I was god-mother to the first one, and mother to the second one. Actually, the second one appeared to have also been a pet, and very easily tamed to us compared to the first one which was truly a feral. As soon as they were tame enough to do so, they were taken to a vet and spayed. And, yes, they were allowed to roam outside, but they had 25 acres to do their roaming on! It was more of a "farm" situation, where I believe cats that are cared for are ok outside. And while they did occasionally go outside, they almost always just stayed in the greenhouses.

So itÂs not the cats IÂm against! Like Bonnie, itÂs the irresponsible owners that I have a problem with!

Lover of animalsÂbut not always a lover of humans,
Skbyird

Well said.

I probably should have said my favorite pet growing up was one of our two cats - both inside cats - who used to fetch and sleep on my bed and ride on my shoulder.

Nonetheless, cat feces has several wonderful critters that are serious concerns for small children. Cats allowed outside also are excellent at reducing bird and small animal populations.

Many places will rent you a live trap cheap or free, and your total time trapping and dropping off at the SPCA is likely cheaper than purchasing a motion-detector sprinkler, cat litter and boxes, keeping your soil moist, repellent, etc.

This trapping and shipping off is a much better method for cat owner behavior modification than promoting an environment where cats can go IMHO. Because it is the owners that need to be trained, not the cats. YMMV.

Dan

I have occasionally found cat poop in my wood mulch too, just FYI.

Cats.....I love them and have two that stay indoors and have owned cats my whole life.

For an outdoor cat it's hard to keep them contained like a dog in your own yard. Have to say that I don't agree with shooting them either.

I don't seem to have problems where I have the thick shredded mulch layed down.

My neighbor's newly adopted stray cat was getting on my nerves this year pooping in various parts of my flower beds. But I also noticed all the rabbit damage I had in my perennial beds last year is not happening this year. All of my beds have not had even one rabbit bite out of any plant and it looks terrific. The cat knows the bunnies live under and around our deck so she has taken to coming by and checking the deck regularly. I've seen remnants of her hunting around the deck so it's a trade off I guess. I'd rather have poop and a nice garden ha!

I was thinking some of you saw my cat injury at the Spring Swap which was May 9th but this didn't happen until May11th....
I was at a neighborhood book club (a different neighbor I don't know very well) and brought my six month old foster baby who was getting fussy so I took her over to a window to distract her. The neighbor's cat jumped up on a bar and was about eye level with me. The cat looked concerned that the baby was crying. So I reached out pat the cat on the head and reassured the kitty (so I thought). Well when I looked down at the baby the cat jumped off the bar and attacked my head. Blood was instantly everywhere and he had torn my temple brow bone area open all the way to the bone. I looked like I had been in a car accident or beat up. I was rushed to the ER and had 11 stitches and puncture wounds all over my head. The baby was untouched thank God. I have a nice scar going on and if it didn't happen to me I wouldn't believe it was from a cat. The ER said it was the worse domestic animal attack (besides a dog) that they had ever seen ugh! The neighbors put the cat down as it had been acting strangely since they brought a new puppy into their home. I still love cats but have to say I see them in a different light.

As aloof as cats can be, they can also be very protective. The cat probably thought you were somehow hurting the baby. We had a calico who was definitely not a cuddler who would always climb into my girls laps when they were crying. Our other cat (who she was always pouncing on and bossing around) had an abscessed tooth and was bleeding and yowling, so of course I picked her up and was trying to see what was wrong. The cat clawed her way up my leg and back because she thought I was hurting her sister.

I totally understand what you mean about outdoor cats and gardens. When I was pregnant, my doc told me to stay out of the garden because there were SIX outdoor "pet" cats and the danger of toxoplasmosis was too high.

But, are you sure they're cat feces? We have an adorable black fox that lives nearby and for a time a skunk, also squirrels. I've just grown to accept the wildlife and we all get along. Well, not too keen on the squirrels at the bird feeder, so we put up a bungee.

Back to the cats. Not sure why people let them run loose, as they run the risk of becoming part of the food chain, or hit by a car. We tried moth balls and small sticks "planted" upright, but the only thing that worked consistently was gravel as mulch.

We have enough coyotes around to keep the feral cat population in check.

Now, if you want to talk about a pest who leaves copious droppings everywhere, let me introduce you to my herd of raccoons.

carlisa,
I like the bungee...give him a little workout for his dinner (though he's a pretty "healthy" looking squirrel).

greenbean, it was fun to watch. None of our current squirrels seem to want to work that hard now that its summer. I even lowered the corn cob for them.