💩 🐱Deterring outside cats using yard as litterbox?

[dhraiden]

Just curious if any active forum-goers have any experience with successfully keeping errant felines from pooping in their yard?


My SO laid down prickly mats I purchased online (they're not injurious) to dissuade them from certain areas where vegetables and herbs and flowers are grown. But I can't carpet the entire yard with these mats. I always put down hot chili pepper powder but it's a temporary nuisance to them at best, requiring frequent application and is quickly dissipated by rainy or windy weather.


The neighbors down both streets I live at the corner of have less of a problem with this because they either have much smaller yard/growing spaces, grow their plants in pots, or have either concreted over their former green spaces or else covered them with gravel and rocks (which is an ugly aesthetic I refuse to adopt).


I've had this problem since moving in 7 years back, some years its less of an issue, others more so; I used to strew cut brambles and thorny rose branches in the marginal areas I'd see feces left in, but that also can't be used everywhere.


I've also coated certain areas with strong-smelling herbal scents (7th gen makes a herbal-based spray disinfectant I'm now using with limited success) but the same restrictions apply as do to the chili powder approach.

Hoping someone can share some useful tips and knowledge! Thank-you!



PS: The cats belong to "no one" and those that belong to my sole directly adjacent neighbor use (so he tells me) a litter box he changes, albeit sporadically. He's elderly and definitely a "cat person" (I linked to an article the NYT wrote him up on describing his care-taking of "working" felines elsewhere on the forums about a month or so ago). I also can't (or don't want to) build my fence line so very high that it would block light, and that still probably wouldn't keep cats out anyway.

 

[SailBoat]

A possible solution would be to lay chicken wire fencing on the ground. This based on cats scratching the ground prior too and after leaving a little something for you. The chicken wire prevents them from starting and completing their practiced approach to leaving you a little something.

Looks like your yard is the neutral zone in which the cats leave their calling cards. Very likely that your yard and home has tons of cat pee as well.

Another approach is to eliminate the undergrowth on your property. Cats love hiding places and if you go to that open field look, they will likely move on!

No cat expert here, only reacting to what I have heard from other people who have had like problems.

 

[dhraiden]

Thanks the good advice, Sail! The chicken-wire laid-flat is essentially the mats I referenced, but I may get a thing of that to see how it works.


The yard is already pretty open, getting it any open-er would require removing marginal/boundary bushes which would detract greatly from aesthetics. Plus, my neighbor has a bunch of "cat hidey holes" which shelter them just over our shared fenced line in any case, which I can not influence.


AFA as feline urine - I don't believe that's present insofar as I never detect the tell-tale stale/ammonia scent it gives off. But clearly habits (and the leavings themselves) are what is attracting the offenders back time and again.

 

[T00tsyd]

Buy a lion? Seriously didn't I read once that a fine way is to deposit lion droppings and this should frighten the cats away. Do you have a local zoo?