cat shit in the garden

[Superape]

Orange peel. Cat's really can't stand the smell of oranges.

 

[ChrisFilter]

What's the norm got to do with it? Are people just patsies to follow convention. Can't people make up their own mind rather than mouthing 'that's how it's always been' and pretending not to notice their cat's impact. There's wilful blindness in a nutshell - the consequences are obvious. It's nonsense to suggest that owners are unable to do anything to change patterns of behaviour - plenty of countries have housecats as the norm rather than the British wondering variety.

Whether you like it or not, letting a cat out in an urban area, where it's almost guaranteed to shit in a neighbour's garden, is inconsiderate. What would you say if someone let their pooch crap in your garden every day without fail? Would you try and help them or hide behind convention?

And don't get so precious on a light hearted thread either. I know you like cats and - despite what you think - I don't mind them either. That doesn't change the fact that it there's some degree of abdcation of responsibilty in letting cats out, and a similar degree of laziness in claiming that nothing can be done to mitgate their effects when there are clearly established ways to stop cats shitting elsewhere. You try and find a wondering cat in New York for example...

The thing is, is that I agree with your reasoning, it makes perfect sense and I can totally see where you're coming from. I've got no problem with that, just the manner in which you deliver your message. I've had cats all my life and I had genuinely never heard your viewpoint before, or even considered that it might be somehow bad to let cats roam - as far as I was concerned, that's just the way it was.

If you had made your point in a constructive and informative way, before it was too late, then I would probably have kept my cats as housecats and one of them wouldn't have died due to a horrible illness. The fact that the notion was introduced in the form of an accusation of laziness, selfishness and a lack of responsibility just got my back up and my instant reaction was to fight back. I stand by that. Your point is perfectly valid, but the delivery is just rude, unfair and unhelpful. I'm not lazy or irresponsible, I was just unaware that I was doing anything that could be considered wrong.

 

[Wolveryeti]

My dad went through this whole palaver and nothing worked - fences, ultrasound emitter, orange peel. Ultimately the only thing was the hose/water bombs from the window, which, although not entirely successful, reduced the frequency of attacks, and at least provided some satisfaction in revenge.

 

[T & P]

The thing is, is that I agree with your reasoning, it makes perfect sense and I can totally see where you're coming from. I've got no problem with that, just the manner in which you deliver your message. I've had cats all my life and I had genuinely never heard your viewpoint before, or even considered that it might be somehow bad to let cats roam - as far as I was concerned, that's just the way it was.

If you had made your point in a constructive and informative way, before it was too late, then I would probably have kept my cats as housecats and one of them wouldn't have died due to a horrible illness. The fact that the notion was introduced in the form of an accusation of laziness, selfishness and a lack of responsibility just got my back up and my instant reaction was to fight back. I stand by that. Your point is perfectly valid, but the delivery is just rude, unfair and unhelpful. I'm not lazy or irresponsible, I was just unaware that I was doing anything that could be considered wrong.

I don't think you- or I- are doing anything wrong at all. Tarannau's opinion on the subject is not impartial or unbiased, but prompted by his love for birds.

Cats are outside animals. Always have, always will be. Considering many of the cats that are kept as pets are rescued or born from an stray mother, if people stopped taking cats as pets there would be far more hungry strays around killing far more birds.

Far easier to blame cats for any decrease in the population of birds than humans anyway.

 

[geminisnake]

Tarannau's opinion on the subject is not impartial or unbiased, but prompted by his love for birds.

But we have a cat, our neighbour has two and the next neighbour has one as well. We ALL feed the birds and get a good variety of visitors so love of one animal or another doesn't have to be exclusive.

I even refrained from hanging out my washing for over an hour one morning to allow the sparrowhawk to eat it's breakfast
I suspect it was a blackbird brekkie coz it was too heavy for her to lift. Ms Sparrowhawk is responsible for 100% of the bird deaths in my garden.

I can kinda see Tarannau's point about cats in built up urban areas. It's not good for them imo. Both cats AND birds need gardens and greenery not bloody driveways!

 

[T & P]

But we have a cat, our neighbour has two and the next neighbour has one as well. We ALL feed the birds and get a good variety of visitors so love of one animal or another doesn't have to be exclusive.

I even refrained from hanging out my washing for over an hour one morning to allow the sparrowhawk to eat it's breakfast
I suspect it was a blackbird brekkie coz it was too heavy for her to lift. Ms Sparrowhawk is responsible for 100% of the bird deaths in my garden.

I can kinda see Tarannau's point about cats in built up urban areas. It's not good for them imo. Both cats AND birds need gardens and greenery not bloody driveways!

I am not unsympathetic to declining bird population either. But I do believe he's barking up the wrong tree. Cats do belong outside- though it is true that certain cats will lead a happy life indoors- and it is wrong and cruel to suggest they should be kept indoors.

In any case the human footprint and population numbers have surely grown far more greatly than the cat population, and humans must bear the brunt of blame for any decline in bird numbers.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Both my neighbours have cats who think my garfden is their personal bog. If I see them in my garden I wind the dog up in to a frenzy then open the back door. The cats then stay away for a few days.

 

[han]

fucking hell!

six more massive cat turds in the garden today. Bleeurgh.

I'm gonna buy some predator piss, chilli powder and plant some of that Coleus Canina stuff. Triple whammy!

If those don't work, I'm tempted to get an airgun

 

[selamlar]

Get a supersoaker of the biggest kind you can find. They really don't like it up 'em, and get the message surprisingly quickly.

 

[tarannau]

Same here. We weeded the garden last weekend to find shite after shite. Fucking unpleasant honking half covered things - if cats handled funerals there'd be a corpse with a smattering of loose pebbles on top, the cat having lost interest and wondered off half way through to lay on a warm car bonnet.

Airguns are too good for them. We need something like a (rubber band) Gatling gun...

 

[ChrisFilter]

I have to keep my cat in for a month 'cos she cut herself up somehow, so she needed stitches et al. We're only a week in and she's fine again, healed up and going stir crazy. I don't think I could ever feel happy cooping cats up like that to be honest, so apologies to the birds and the gardeners but my cats will continue to roam free as nature intended.

 

[tarannau]

What? Nature intended you to selectively and cross breed a non-domestic species, letting it out on a latchkey basis like a spoilt teenager? An animal so wild that it has a doting humanoid owner to take it to the vets, inoculate, entertain and feed it. As nature intended my arse - cats are like the pampered and posh Sheridan student of the pet world.

 

[han]

oh dear

 

[ChrisFilter]

oh dear

I'm not going to rise to it... I made my point earlier in the thread

Birds are shit, they deserve to die.

 

[tarannau]

May a burgeoning flock of blackbirds shit repeatedly on your head Mr Filter.

As nature intended of course...

 

[ChrisFilter]

What? Nature intended you to selectively and cross breed a non-domestic species, letting it out on a latchkey basis like a spoilt teenager? An animal so wild that it has a doting humanoid owner to take it to the vets, inoculate, entertain and feed it. As nature intended my arse - cats are like the pampered and posh Sheridan student of the pet world.

I didn't do any cat breeding! And good for the cats... they evolved to be cute and loving, clearly the best strategy for an easy life.

 

[ChrisFilter]

May a burgeoning flock of blackbirds shit repeatedly on your head Mr Filter.

As nature intended of course...

Ugly squawky things that didn't have the good grace to die out with the rest of their lizard kin.

I'm actually training my cat to shit more thanks to these threads.

 

[Final]

lion poo.

Aye - that's what I always heard was good (though probably after reading it on here somewhere? )

But... getting rid of free cat poo by spreading around paid-for big cat poo?

 

[oryx]

I think ChrisFilter has a good point about fox crap.

There seems to have been an increase in complaints about 'cat' shit in gardens since the rapid increase in urban foxes.

When I was a kid we had a cat, the neighbourhood was full of cats & I don't remember seeing shit around in the way you do now.

Where I live now is Fox Central - they're all over the back gardens and there are fucking animal turds everywhere, & they do look different from cats' (despite our cats being let outdoors we have a litter tray so I have more familiarity with catshit than is desirable......).

 

[ChrisFilter]

We have fox shit all over the garden, and like you I've never come across cat shit.

Cat shit: thin round sausages
Fox shit: piles of splodge

 

[tarannau]

Trust me Chris. We get both.

FWIW cats seem to shit in more inaccesible places, usually under the cover of your favoured herb plants for some unpleasant reason.

And bigger squishy fox shit tends to be in more obvious, but easily trodden in places. LQ stepped on a right corker last w/e doing the weeding, which was funny until I 'weeded out' a solid cat turd with a big bunch of leaves.

 

[Final]

We have fox shit all over the garden, and like you I've never come across cat shit.

Cat shit: thin round sausages
Fox shit: piles of splodge

Squirrel poo is pretty splodgy and manky too.

I learned the hard way about their evilness (and fine aim) after taking to the shade of a convenient oak one summer.

 

[oryx]

The only time I come across cat poo in the garden is when I'm digging because I do believe they bury it.

To be honest, animal poo is an occupational hazard of gardening. Cats aren't the only ones - we definitely get fox & bird poo as well. At least cats tend to stick to gardens and litter trays and you're not having to constantly side-step cat shit on the pavement.

I see gardening as a kind of urban/suburnan/tamer version of farming, which is a dirty, earthy, smelly business!

I sincerely hope everyone mentioning air guns is joking:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/7364550.stm

at least the poor little bugger survived.

 

[zenie]

I don't think you- or I- are doing anything wrong at all. Tarannau's opinion on the subject is not impartial or unbiased, but prompted by his love for birds.

Cats are outside animals. Always have, always will be. Considering many of the cats that are kept as pets are rescued or born from an stray mother, if people stopped taking cats as pets there would be far more hungry strays around killing far more birds.

Far easier to blame cats for any decrease in the population of birds than humans anyway.

But if they were shitting in your garden and you had to find them all the time, I think you might feel differently. There's plenty of room in the countryside for them but in cities it is a problem.

Same here. We weeded the garden last weekend to find shite after shite. Fucking unpleasant honking half covered things - if cats handled funerals there'd be a corpse with a smattering of loose pebbles on top, the cat having lost interest and wondered off half way through to lay on a warm car bonnet.

Airguns are too good for them. We need something like a (rubber band) Gatling gun...

I would get pissed off if it was my garden though (and I didn't have cats of my own)

I have to keep my cat in for a month 'cos she cut herself up somehow, so she needed stitches et al. We're only a week in and she's fine again, healed up and going stir crazy. I don't think I could ever feel happy cooping cats up like that to be honest, so apologies to the birds and the gardeners but my cats will continue to roam free as nature intended.

How would you feel if your neighbour collected all your cats shit and put it on your front door step?

Ugly squawky things that didn't have the good grace to die out with the rest of their lizard kin.

I'm actually training my cat to shit more thanks to these threads.

lol

 

[scumbalina]

DON'T do what my SIL did (although I'd be impressed if there was someone else this stupid...) and buy 10 litres of Tesco Value Bleach and pour it all over your garden, neglecting to realise that this will NOT make the garden any safer for the kids to play in than leaving the cat shit and it will *duh* kill your garden

 

[ChrisFilter]

How would you feel if your neighbour collected all your cats shit and put it on your front door step?

Great. I'd box it and sell it back to them as lion poo.

 

[JohnnyOrange]

I reckon some Lion or other big pred piss will do the trick, humanely as well.

Me mate raved about the stuff. Apparently it smells fucked up, not like human piss.

Pheromones. It smells like 'something bigger than you's been here and will eat your furry arse.'

More seriously there are so many cats in urban area that it's difficult not to think of owners letting their cats out as selfish and inconsideratearound here.

Not really. It's the laziness of cat owners that get me. Aside from letting their little darlings out to shit anywhere, taking no responsibility for their animals whatsoever, cat owners will suddenly pretend to give a damn when - like der - they fail to come home. Them the bloody owners litter the neighbourhood with 'lost' cat signs, as if they had any idea where the cats were in the first place. Lazy lard arsed irresponsible fecks.

And when was the last time you saw owners giving their cats road proficiency tests. If it's not damaging lamposts with sticky sellotape residue and tacky posters they'll allow their cat to damage precious autmobiles through poor knowledge of the green cross code..

You're the cunt that ran over my cat a fortnight ago yeah? I'm sorry if the gash on his face marked your bumper as you sped like a fucker down a road of terraced houses. Thanks for that - his front right leg's now the third most expensive thing I own after my house and my car. After all, he's supposed to be more road-savvy than you isn't he? Yeah, you're not being entirely serious and you probably prefer birds and stuff, but it's probably no coincidence that swifts (who don't land) love my area. And drive the cats mental, which is funny.

What? Nature intended you to selectively and cross breed a non-domestic species, letting it out on a latchkey basis like a spoilt teenager? An animal so wild that it has a doting humanoid owner to take it to the vets, inoculate, entertain and feed it. As nature intended my arse - cats are like the pampered and posh Sheridan student of the pet world.

It's great having animals in the house that don't give you any more respect than you're due. And Robocat now laughs at your car bumper, the expensive little sod.

 

[JohnnyOrange]

Also, in my experience most cats run in fear of aerosols - just get a spray bottle, fill it full of water and use that on them. No-one gets hurt and if you do it for long enough they'll associate your garden with something they don't like, and cats don't do things they don't like.

 

[T & P]

But if they were shitting in your garden and you had to find them all the time, I think you might feel differently. There's plenty of room in the countryside for them but in cities it is a problem.

I'd be pissed off, for sure, but I wouldn't call for cats to be banished from cities or be kept indoors any more than I'd call for birds to be driven away from cities because they shit on my car. (and believe me, on my street parking near certain trees will guarantee a barrage of bird shit).

Or for that matter dogs, some of which litter the streets with poo.

It's annoying, but then many things are. You just try to make the best of it. On balance the benefits and happiness pets bring to their owners outweigh the inconvenience some of them can cause. You could argue that cars are not necessary in cities at all, and that the noise and pollution they create are far more intrusive and dangerous than pet excrement. But I wouldn't call for them to be banned from cities either.

 

[ben foggle2]

Fox excrement stinks more too.