I'm utterly mortified by this thread. As a cat owner, the idea of my pet causing my neighbours such distress/anger/inconvenience is a complete nightmare. I'd like to think I'm a responsible cat owner; although he does go outdoors, we only let him out during the day (he's locked in between around 9pm and 8am) and we check on him if he's not back in after 30-45mins. He's often just sitting on our fence or shed and we don't have reason to believe he's going into other people's gardens (I hope that's the case). For his own safety as well as respect for our neighbours, we've never wanted him to roam too far or for too long. We work from home, so giving him attention and playing with him indoors throughout the day is easy for us, and I believe this has made him just as happy to be indoors as out.
Something we have done to stop our cat from either defecating in our own flower beds as well as (hopefully) our neighbours, is to have an area behind the shed which has some loose soil that he does his business in. He picked up that this is his toilet very quickly and given we clear up his mess every few days, it's clear to see he's using it. Although not ideal given the issue is with other people's pets, maybe those of you with the space could consider doing the same so at least the mess is contained to a single area?
Oh, and just one thing which isn't particularly helpful but which might explain why deterrents don't always work, is that cats learn better through positive reinforcement. Telling a cat off - shouting at it for example - is much less effective than when they're given strokes and food and told 'good girl/boy' when they're being good. This is why being an informed pet owner is so important to ensuring pets don't turn into little ****.
Anyway, of behalf of all cat owners who do care about being good neighbours, sorry so many of you are dealing with nightmare neighbours (don't blame the cats).
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need"
ASDA have bamboo barbeque sticks at £1 per 100. Push those into the soil in the cat's favourite dumping ground and it should encourage it to go elsewhere. Once plants start to grow they will hide the sticks.
The only way I've found to avoid other people's cats pooping in the garden is not to leave large areas of bare soil, particularly if it's loose and recently-dug. Any area that's temporarily cleared gets covered with sheets of cardboard or old compost bags or whatever else I have around. Our furball poops in his litter tray (well sometimes he misses , he's getting elderly, but he doesn't go on anyone's garden).
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
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Shame about the dog poop though but at least it's my animal.
Something we have done to stop our cat from either defecating in our own flower beds as well as (hopefully) our neighbours, is to have an area behind the shed which has some loose soil that he does his business in. He picked up that this is his toilet very quickly and given we clear up his mess every few days, it's clear to see he's using it. Although not ideal given the issue is with other people's pets, maybe those of you with the space could consider doing the same so at least the mess is contained to a single area?
Oh, and just one thing which isn't particularly helpful but which might explain why deterrents don't always work, is that cats learn better through positive reinforcement. Telling a cat off - shouting at it for example - is much less effective than when they're given strokes and food and told 'good girl/boy' when they're being good. This is why being an informed pet owner is so important to ensuring pets don't turn into little ****.
Anyway, of behalf of all cat owners who do care about being good neighbours, sorry so many of you are dealing with nightmare neighbours (don't blame the cats).