5 Things To Do When Cats Poop In Your Garden (Commercial And Private)
It is fair to say that nobody likes cats leaving poop in the garden, although cat poop in garden environments, both domestic and commercial spaces unfortunately can be a common occurrence.
The question is, why do cats poop in your garden? And is there anything you can do to stop it from happening? These are important questions, so let’s take a look at what advice we can offer.
We know that cats love to roam around freely, but this can mean that they will find your flower beds, which is a popular place to find cat poop in garden areas. They can also dig up borders which is messy and inconvenient for gardeners. When thinking about how to avoid cat poop in the garden, those places are the first things to drag our minds to consider.
Difficulties With Cat Poop in Gardens
As well as the general problems we discussed above, there are other problems that arise when you have cat poop in your garden. One of those difficulties that we are often asked about is how to stop my dog from eating cat poop in the garden. This is both unhealthy for your dog, and not nice for owners if they have to clean up their teeth, or if their dog gets ill.
Beyond this, there is a fairly obvious problem with cat poop in your garden, which is that it can smell awful. From you as a private garden owner, to visitors, or employees if it is a business-related space, cat poop in garden settings creates a smell that nobody wishes to encounter or put up with, especially when some of the important clients appear in your commercial garden or some family members in the barbecue time.
On top of all this, there are families with toddlers who peacefully play, where the cat poop might appear. This could lead to touching or getting cat poop on toddlers.
5 Simple Tips To Help Your Garden
- Installing a motion-activated sprinkler/keeping your flower beds well watered – cats do not like wet soil, so can be a good first attempt when considering how to stop cats from doing the toilet in your garden and crushing your plants.
- Keep your garden clean! – According to the Royal Horticultural Society, most cats prefer loose, dry earth, mulch and compost, so avoid these where possible too.
- Never offer or leave cats food of any kind when they come to your garden.
- You should also make access to your garden more difficult and consider using scent control products that stop cats from wanting to come to your garden. Cats are sensitive to smell, so you can use strong scents such as lavender, peppermint or cinnamon to keep them away. Mix the scent with water and spray it around the garden. This method is short-term but cost-effective and not toxic. You can also try scattering citrus/banana peels around the garden!
- If none of the above doesn’t work, try using an outdoor litter tray to manage the localisation where cat poop in your garden areas goes.
Neighbours cat pooping in my garden: What does the UK law say…
Few things are more annoying for homeowners than when a neighbour’s cat keeps coming into your property and you find cat poop in garden areas.
How to avoid that is one thing for pet owners, but is there anything the UK law says you can do when you do not have a cat, and you know that it is the neighbour’s feline that is fouling your garden?
Put simply, The prospects are not good for someone who feels that they are a victim of a neighbour’s cats fouling their garden. Unfortunately in the UK, there is no specific law which definitely states that your cats cannot foul someone else’s garden or land.
When it comes to cat poop in garden settings that are from other people’s pets, you have to rely upon the general law. Depending on the severity of the fouling a person might start a civil action in the County Court for nuisance.
If an individual person is subjected to the alleged nuisance they would sue in “private nuisance”. When the public is subjected to the nuisance the action would be in “public nuisance”.
Public nuisance actions are normally instigated by local authorities. If a person starts an act of a private nuisance then if he succeeds he may receive an award of damages and he may get an injunction against the cat’s owner.
He would have to show that there has been “material discomfort” or annoyance.
Unless your cat owning neighbour has a large number of cats and there has been a substantial amount of fouling such an action has and high probability of failure. There are also financially costly.