How to prevent cats from shitting on my lawn?!?
Neighborhood cats shit right in the middle of my lawn. It stinks and the robot lawn mover makes it even worse.
I do NOT like cats, and this is not helping.
What works to keep them from shitting on my lawn?
The votes have spoken. Some people are cat lovers; thanks for the great advice from the rest of you! I will not go out of my way to accommodate other people's pets that aren't welcome on my property. My first weapon of choice will be chili because it's simple and cheap. Other ideas have been noted.
Cats are territorial, you have to take a bigger shit on top of theirs to show dominance.
This guy dominates.
Drop a stinker on those 4 legged trespassers
Robot lawnmower.. Damn
It's like an outdoor Roomba. Very common in Europe, nothing special at all.
"nothing special at all" he says...
I grew up using a push mower.
So did I. Now I am old, and will enjoy the modern world.
Until the robot hits a cat turd you could have seen.
I mean, good for you and your good luck in finances. This isn't something we can all afford, though. A lot of my neighbors used rusty reel mowers growing up. Even the gas variants were out of reach.
Where are you from? Gas and electric mowers are the standard everywhere I've lived here in Canada.
My daughter has two reel mowers. (She had one, and I gave her mine.)
They don't get used much though, it's more for nostalgia along with my scythe.
I'm imagining that you have a grim reaper outfit to go along with that scythe. And that you do your lawns at night.
Special if it works, the damn wire needs to be redone completely each spring because it somehow breaks somewhere.
In 1980?
"used to" is past tense, good job
I feel like this can't possibly be true... The cheapest one I can find is $650. Like, these are not affordable for most folks.
You say that like Europe isn't comprised of like 50 countries and near a billion people
I’m from the UK and I’ve never seen an automatic lawnmower unless it was on tv
But all the EU countries got one for christm... Oh....
Lawn mover!
motion activated sprinkler
predator pee scent in your lawn
hot pepper flakes around your lawn
put trap boxes out with bait inside, catch the cat
A motion activated or retomely deployable sprinkler system would work wonders. No need for drenching the critter, just interrupt or annoy the cat. After a few forced baths, the cat would associate shitting on your lawn with getting wet and just move to safer grounds.
Sprinkle catnip all over a neighbor you don't like (the owner?) yard.
Maybe that’s what the neighbour did to op lol
Accept that animals shit outside.
Cool, Imma just let a dog shit on your lawn and when you get annoyed you can just accept that dogs shit outside.
I've already accepted that animals shit outside. Why would it upset me?
Doubt it. You'd 100% be telling someone to clean up their dog shit.
Also, the shit is only a small aspect of the disrespect and neglect people push on their outdoor cats.
I cannot fathom the low intelligence required when it comes to people not understanding why you should have cats unmonitored, unleashed and roaming free.
Oh the shock and horror, the animal that hasn’t been fully domesticated yet likes to be outside. Just because you let your cat go outside doesn’t mean you’re neglecting it.
There are 5 basic welfare needs: suitable environment, suitable diet, need to be housed with or without other animals (species specific), need to be protected from suffering/disease and the need to show natural behaviours. Sure most of them can be met indoors but you can’t provide a suitable environment or let them show natural behaviours unless you allow them to go outside when they need to or you live in a mansion that’s big enough for a cat to fill it’s territorial range.
Cool, so they are not domesticated so we should consider them pests and have the population culled because it's an invasive species. Thanks
So all non domesticated animals are pests now? What about geese? Or deer? Are they all pests? They’re invasive species in certain countries too.
I'm glad you and the fictional version of me you've constructed can carry on this conversation without my continued involvement.
Don't need your involvement to know you're full of shit and that if your lawn was covered in dogshit from your neighbours that you wouldn't be pissed off.
I don't care if an animal shits on my lawn. I'm not rolling round on it, and I'm not super precious about my bougie lawnmower like OP.
Are you incapable of imagining that there are people out there who aren't joyless karens?
Tf are you talking about joyless...there is no joy in someone being careless with their 'pet' and neglecting them while letting them roam because look how cute fluffy is.
@PlutoniumAcid i’m 64, i’ve lived in over a hundred different places, including rural and suburbs with lawns. literally never ever had this problem. not even when i owned cat! so it seems you’re cursed. you need to find the witch or wizard you offended and make amends.
i’m really amazed this would even happen, as cat prefer to bury their waste so they like places they can dig miles more than lawns. i wonder: did your u maybe see one cat, once, poop and now you think all poop is cat poop? because dogs are a lot more likely to be doing this regularly than cats.
yeah, cats bury their shit. they don't shit on grass and leave it exposed.
only time cats shit in the open is to prove a point. OP probably pissed off this cat
Elderly cats don't bury their shit. A neighbour's cat used to bury stealth bombs in my garden until he got too old and decrepit to bother. The pinnacle was a gross runny shit on top of a creeping thyme. I was thrilled when he died, but then she got a young feisty cat that slaughters birds. Sigh.
In general, many feral cats do not bury their shit. I have no idea why people keep saying this like it's a fact - I have dealt with this exact same, well, shit at several places I've lived. Most of the time it is cats shitting in the raised beds, but I have also seen some who like a certain plot of grass or weeds.
I wouldn't trust anyone whose lived in a hundred different places about anything at all
Can you explain this a bit? I am having a hard time understanding how living in different places would make someone less informed. I would assume the opposite by default, but I'm interested in your thought process.
It's the narrow thought process of one who has always lived in the she spot, I would imagine.
I'm guessing that their thought process is something akin to, if they have had to hop THAT much, their judgement can't be good since if it were, they would have settled before reaching the high number of 100. I don't agree, but that's my guess
All these psychopaths saying kill the cat or catch it and relocate it are fucking deranged. Talk to the owners if you know who it is... firstly, I'm sure they would at least be receptive to the problem and if they're not then maybe look into legal outlets. If you've gone out of your way to post on lemmy you're technically savvy enough to look up local laws. people have also posted actual remediation methods that aren't terrible and could actually improve your lawn in some scenarios as well so maybe try those out if you're into them.
I'm positive that no one wants to lose a pet in any capacity. Just some simple communication with the owners could solve this, and if not, there are other options.
Sorry you're going through this though, shit sucks. Pun intended.
I can 100% guarantee you that the owners will just be extremely confused about the idea that people might not want other people's "pets" in their yard. I can 100% guarantee you that the response will just be "well it's a cat."
And it means that if something ever happens to this small animal, OP will get blamed for it if he says anything to the neighbors.
100%?
Yeah, I've dealt with this situation before. People who let cats roam free like this seem to live in a world where there is precisely one socially acceptable exception to otherwise generally accepted neighborly decorum - cats. Suggesting that you don't want their cat on your property makes you the asshole in their eyes, because they literally cannot comprehend any solution to the problem. Obviously the sky is blue, and cats are allowed to shit wherever they want. Thus spake the toxoplasmosis.
Place a box with sand near the area you want to protect. Move it further away a feet or so by day. In 10 days that cat will be shitting wherever you guided it to. Leave the box and or the sand. Done.
Low cost. Low effort. No animal cruelty. No dealing with neighbor. Effective.
Using this method, OP could guide the cat poop in the owner's yard.
Are you sure it's cats?
Have you seen the cats pooping or just sniffing the poop?
Depends where you are, but foxes would be a more likely bet. Fox poop stinks too - really foul stuff. Cat poop generally is quite inocuos once it drys out, although a lawn mowing bot slicing it up would make sense for making it worse.
I have never heard of cats pooping in the middle of a lawn before. Normally they like private and safe spaces to poop as they're vulnerable when pooping, and normally they're fastidious about burying it where possible.
iF it really is cats, then maybe get a gravel section next to your lawn that they might prefer to go in? A litter box essentially.
Sure looks like a cat to me.
Go with it, not against it. Make a small sandbox. Cat would favour that as a toilet over anything else.
Go with what...continuing to allow people to have strays? No thanks.. relocate the cat or give it to the SPCA to be sold to someone who ACTUALLY cares about the animals wellbeing.
Don't cater to neglectful owners by providing places for them to shit in the wild. Disgusting
Throughout history, humanity has had to adapt to nature instead of trying to change it to suit humans in various ocasions. Where a cat takes a shit is one of those times lol.
Cats are domestic animals. We literally altered nature then flew them around the world. They are not native to NA. Keep your cats leashed or indoors and monitored when outside.
They aren’t domestic animals they’re tame animals, they still haven’t diverged from wildcats and there are a bunch of wildcat/house cat crossbreeds because of that.
Cats are semi-domestic at best.
Ignoring strays, you do realise there is no practical way for a cat owner to control where their cat takes a shit?
That is not negligence, it's nature.
You can't tell a dog where to shit, the difference being you'll pick it up where you can, and it probably can't climb fences.
There literally is. You can respect your neighbors by not letting your cat roam free, the same way I don't let my dog roam free. I really do not understand why people have trouble with this very simple concept.
Yeah...keep it inside and give it a box of whatever to shit in. This also isn't just about their shit but the utter disrespect for the animal to allow it to roam free, unsupervised and the disrespect to the other humans who are forced to live with the animal you chose to set free
The cat is happy to go outside. It’s their natural behaviour. Doesn’t mean I approve but don’t spin this as being neglectful.
No shit. Dogs like going outside too, but it's considered neglect if you aren't in direct supervision.
It's neglectful. You don't know when it last ate, you don't know what diseases it gets...it's uncaring, and neglectful to the animal.
Get a dog
Cat shits in garden at night. Dog is in garden during day, eating and rolling in the cat shit.
Source: my dog.
There was an old woman who purchased a dog.
motion detection water sprinkler?
That seems like the way to go for sure. On top of being affordable, it’s quick to set up, safe, should work quickly, and can quickly be taken down to return the lawn to normal. Or quickly put back in place if necessary.
This is the one. If you're tech-savvy you could probably find a way to activate a cheap wifi valve based on motion detection from your camera. Otherwise, there's this: https://www.orbitonline.com/products/yard-enforcer-motion-activated-sprinkler
Put in a sand pit somewhere you are ok with them shitting. Training domesticated cats is an undertaking that in my limited experience comes down to giving them an option they'd prefer over their current behavior. Trying to dissuade a feral cat from shitting where they please humanely seems like a loosing battle.
I am OK with them shitting not on my property. If I'd wanted cat shit, I'd get a cat. I don't, so I don't. These aren't feral cats.
The irony being that cats don't shit in their own gardens, best way to stop getting cat shit in your garden is to get a cat.
It's best to just trap them and relocate them far far away. Or bring them to whatever shelter will sell these cats to more families that will then have more outdoor cats.
That’s a horrible thing to do to someone’s pet
True. Although letting cats roam around isn't great either. They often get diseases (e.g. feline AIDS) or get run over and tend to decimate local wildlife. It's not awesome.
PS but doing this doesn't solve anything. They will get another cat and do the same goddamn thing.
Eventually they run out of cats...
But I agree, it's short term. People that have outdoor cats should be charged with animal neglect and prevented from owning animals as a long term solution
What...relocate an obvious stray? If they cared so much they wouldn't let it roam like a stray.
Why do people always defend those who clearly don't care about their cats well being in the first place by claiming 'its an outdoor cat'.
Your logic is ass backwards. Leash your cat when it's outdoors or don't have a cat.
And your logic is bass ackwards. The solution is to educate people about how bad letting cats live outdoors is, not pretend that their pet is a feral. All you'll do that way is eventually come home to broken windows once they find out who stole their cat. Tell them how much better (and longer) their cat's life will be if they live indoors vs. outdoors and you're much more likely to actually change something.
The majority of people don't know any better. And if they grew up with cats, it's very likely that that's how they were taught that you care for a cat. It's only been in the past 20 years or so that the consensus on how cats should be kept has shifted from outdoors to indoors. Hell, look at how common declawing cats still is.
Ahhh yes because educating people about how they are neglectful with animals clearly works...I've been telling people for years and guess what, they still open the window and let them roam.
These people know it's wrong, but they don't care because look how cute the cat is...plus it won't shut up because they keep allowing the behaviours. If it truly is the case about people being ignorant about cats, why aren't there more dogs roaming....they know it's wrong, they just don't care.
The reason there aren’t more dogs roaming is because dogs are a completely separate species from the wild wolves they descended from, house cats still interbreed with wildcats because we haven’t domesticated them yet.
Ahhh yes, justification for people to be careless with the pets. Gotta love it.
I m sure my neighbors will be sad. And later get a new cat.
Don’t take your neighbours pet away. Don’t punish an animal that doesn’t know it’s doing anything wrong, punish the owner… by reporting them. Or relocating the cat shit to their front step. Or you can start by just talking to them
It's not a pet if they let it roam and don't even know where the hell the thing is or what it's doing. They are the neglectful owners and shouldn't have a pet. Keep your cats indoors or risk losing them.
The neighbors will be sure to tell their cat to stop shitting in the lawn. The cat will listen, and stop, surely.
Maybe they don’t realize how far they’re wandering, it’s just worth a shot is all. It’s not the only option available anyway, people absolutely can get fines handed out as well. I have more aggressive location ideas where the cat poop can be placed as well..
Who cares if they don't realize it, they shouldn't even be letting cats roam in the first place ...they are neglectful about the cats well being by even letting it roam free outside unsupervised.
The reason to care about that is to improve your chances of solving the problem. If it turns out they are doing that unintentionally, talking to them may fix or reduce your problem, pretty straightforward.
Kill enough of them and they'll stop getting new ones.
So have you moved on from killing animals to people yet, or is that still a few weeks down the line?
Can't kill the nuisance invasive species cause it's to cute. Fuck all the local natural wild life it's killing though, birds are dumb.
That's a false equivalence, a hyperbolic statement, not worth consideration.
Why are you all over this thread sticking up for animal abuse? Creepy
Don't kill it. Just rehome it or relocate it to the wilderness far away where it can live in nature like the 'owners' want anyways
Plant some lemongrass.
When that shows to only be partially effective, accept the fact that you can't control the ongoings of the world in every fashion.
Don't some varieties of Lemon Grass kill cats? Something about shutting down their liver if eaten.
Plant non toxic cat repellant plants:
https://pondinformer.com/plants-that-repel-cats/
Easy. Get rid of the lawn. Animals live outside. If it's not this cat, it'll be something else.
We bought a couple of plants that have a smell that allegedly repels cats and other animals and had good results planting them around our patches. But we also left the dog in the garden more often which might have helped even more. The plants are called plectranthus ornatus ... but there are others which might also work: https://horticulture.co.uk/cat-deterrent-plants/
I have a section of dirt next to my driveway. All the other suggestions here worked for a few days max, but the solution ended up being laying chickenwire fencing on the ground. Cats won't do that on ground they can't dig.
Find the owner and tell them the cat is shitting on your property. If they tell you to pound sand, call city/county animal control to see what your options are. Alternatively, pick the shit up before your robot lawnmower runs it over.
My parents used to have this problem with dogs (our neighbors loved to let them shit everywhere but their own yard) and had a great amount of success with lining the perimeter of the property with moth balls.
For dog poop I remove it and sprinkle coffee grounds on top to confuse the scent.
What do the moth balls do?
Apparently, fuck up the environment, so forget I said anything
Smell
Partially jokey answer: An automatic sprinkler and a motion detector
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElcviGYMb3U
Serious answer: I don't think there's much... I used to have a problem with cats pissing on my bicycle (which used to be parked outside) and the only thing that would keep them away was a bike alarm - at the expense of mine and my neighbors' sleep. Covering the bike made no difference, they just pissed on the cover instead. The fix ended up being just parking my bike inside.
If you let the garden get a little bit overgrown, do they still come and drop their shit there?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=ElcviGYMb3U
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I don't think this is a joke answer. This was the only way a buddy could keep the cats from going in his kids sandbox.
Doesn't help. No mowing while I was away and it was bad when we came back. Oh, the stink :-(
On the regular, I want my lawn to be nice, not overgrown.
Look up ultrasonic animal repeller. I've never used one, but it may work for you. It makes a high pitch noise that should stop cats and other animals from wandering into your yard.
I'm skeptical about how well those things work. There are a few houses with them on our walking route, and they definitely bother me much more than my dog. He couldn't care less about the noise, while it gives me a headache. Maybe cats would be more sensitive to the noise than my dog, but like I said, I'm skeptical.
I'm the same as you, I find them really painful, I think people don't realise how much these can affect humans.
Wonder how much the average age of those buying them plays into it. A 40 year old may not be able to hear it, but younger people almost certainly will.
Yeah you're probably right, although I'm 35.
Honestly I just have no clue what the normal age to start losing that range of hearing is. My hearings kind of fucked up after being in band and sitting in front of trumpets and trombones from 6th grade til I graduated college lol
Oh dear, sorry for your (hearing) loss. I have pretty bad tinnitus from gigs etc. and not protecting my poor ears. The sonic repellents seem to cut through the ringing though.
My neighbors across the street got those as a deer repellent for their garden.
Although it was pointed out of the garden toward the street. So whenever it triggered we could definitely hear it in our living room. They ended up taking down after I talked with them and it wasn't really keeping the deer away anyway.
Hypersonic deterrence have never been proven to work.
I saw a guy on YouTube make an automated water turret that shoots the water hose (not a water gun, but the actual hose) at anything that the camera recognized as a cat on his lawn. It was awesome. I tried finding the video, but can't remember his name.
Side note on the chili idea, it doesn't really work on many shorthaired cats. Neither does cayenne pepper powder. [E] That was a problem I had at a previous house. I had a neighborhood cat that kept meowing hella loud in the middle of the night right outside my window. The cayenne and chili actually attracted him and more cats, and I ended up with three visiting cats, instead of the one original. Just be aware this could be your fate, too, if you use foodstuffs.
I think your looking for I Did A Thing's video.
Yeah, I saw pictures of how Roomba smeared dog shit all over the floor once, so I can imagine how a robot lawn mower could make it worse
Cats can be territorial. Shut on your own lawn. Claim it for yourself.
You need to make your lawn less appealing than your neighbors. They might not care as much or even notice the cats shitting in their yard. A plastic owl works with birds... maybe a lawn ornament of a predator would do
Go xeric and nuke the lawn or motion activated sprinklers.
Shit on your own lawn to establish dominance.
My family drops mothballs which isn't an environmentally friendly solution, but it's more humane than what my stepdad wanted to do.
Sorry buddy it’s their lawn now, smells like them.
Don’t like it? You gotta shit on your lawn to show them who it really belongs to
Get a dog.
You can have a dog, but then you'll have a problem with dog shit
@PlutoniumAcid a small pile of sand in a corner of yard would be preferred by most cats. other than that, as someone said above, “accept that animals shit outside.” besides, climate issues will soon make lawns go away anyway. 😢
You kidnap them and give them a sandbox.
End of story.
Humane landmines.
Learn to love cats. Then they'll leave you alone forever.
Someone with a robot lawnmower whining about cats?
Wow, entitled much?
There is no way you genuinely believe OP is entitled for wanting to avoid piles of shit.
OP has a robot lawnmower. This means they could absolutely afford installing a fence.
Think about that before you defend their whining again.
How does a fence do anything about a cat?
You're either overestimating thr cost of a lawn roomba or vastly underestimating how much it costs to get a fence put in
A robot lawnmower costs between $700 and $3000. A fence starts at around $5000 and can get into the $30,000s easily. It's almost like you have no idea what you are talking about. Additionally, if the person needs a lawnmower then having a robot one isn't a much bigger expense.
Finally, to really highlight how stupid your responses are, you do realize that cats can jump fences, right? A normal house cat can jump 6ft quite easily, and outdoor stray cats jump onto our 8ft tall privacy wall all the time.
lol I hope you don't think I'll respect your tone.
A fence is a lot more expensive than a Roomba, and isn't necessarily permitted where they are.
You must be kind of stupid.
Why he wouldn't? Can I go and shit at your lawn then? He has the right to not wanting a cat to take a shit on his lawn that's disgusting.
He's free to do something to try and prevent it, as long as it doesn't hurt the cat and its a wild cat
Yes of course and the suggestions have been non harmful such as sprinklers.
How is hurting a feral cat a criteria for what he is allowed to do? A coyote would certainly have no compunction, why should he?
I'll take a coyote over a cat. At least the coyote is native.
Yes he has a right to do that. Having a right to do something does not preclude a person from being entitled by doing it.
exactly, and who wants to clean cat shit off a lawn mower blade in the hot sun?