How to prevent cats from shitting on my lawn?!?
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.
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.
@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.
Restaurant grade/sized (big bag) red chili flakes you can get off Amazon - wear full clothing/gloves when spreading around the lawn as it burns on your skin in this quantity. You can use a grass seed spreader (the hand crank green bucket kind) to spread them, or just use your hands. Pay mind to the direction of the wind and face / work downwind so they don't blow back on yourself while spreading.
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.
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.
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.
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/
Plant non toxic cat repellant plants:
Easy. Get rid of the lawn. Animals live outside. If it's not this cat, it'll be something else.
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.
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?
My family drops mothballs which isn't an environmentally friendly solution, but it's more humane than what my stepdad wanted to do.
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.
Cats can be territorial. Shut on your own lawn. Claim it for yourself.
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
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
Shit on your own lawn to establish dominance.
Go xeric and nuke the lawn or motion activated sprinklers.
Get a dog.
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
You can have a dog, but then you'll have a problem with dog shit
Bushmasters are good for this.
@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.
Learn to love cats. Then they'll leave you alone forever.