Neighbours hate my cats

[OhWesternWind]

I have been living here around six months and have had problems with one set of neighbours who have complained about lots of things (children noise, my hens' noise, cat poo which of course is down to my cats and not any of the other at least five cats in the street). BTW I think we are a normal family, not excessively noisy, and we never ever had any complaints in our last house when actually we had more cats than we do now as we lost an old boy last winter. This man has his own issues and I know this so I have been trying to make some allowances, but he threatened to poison my cats if they came on his garden again but thankfully hasn't!

Now today I got a knock on the door and a totally unknown man was there ranting about my cats going in his garden and did I think it was right that he had to clear up their mess four times now and all the other neighbours agreed and they were all fed up with me and my cats etc etc etc and what was I going to do about it? I said I didn't know, but why didn't he try hosing/spraying them if they came into his garden? At this he started to walk away but then he saw one of the other neighbours in her garden, an old lady, and started to call her over to join in about the cats being a nuisance presumably. I said to him, I'm not up for all this and closed the door, then he stood ranting in the street about me (I could hear him).

I just don't know what to do, I want to get on with the neighbours but I hate the feeling they are all talking about me and the cats. Also, I don't know what I can do to stop the cats going in their gardens other than what I have suggested, and also I really don't think my cats are the only guilty parties around here!

Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with this?

[SlightlySuperiorPeasant]

Oh dear. It can't be a nice situation for anyone.

I don't blame you for feeling like it's not just your cats, but do your cats go in other people's gardens? If so, the following might help scale down the animosity:

• fitting bells to your cats' collars so the neighbours can hear them coming and give chase if they want to.
  

• arming your neighbours with water pistols (loads in various summer sales at the moment - ASDA are doing little ones for £1.)
  

• offering to do a poo sweep if one of your cats is spotted toiletting in a garden.
  

• making your garden as attractive as possible to cats. Cat mint, gravel, freshly dug patch of soil etc.
  

• litter-box training your cats if you haven't done so already.
  

I'm not a cat owner but I have lots of cats in my garden and it is a depressing nuisance. All of the above would be appreciated by me.

[OhWesternWind]

Hi and thanks for your reply. I am sure my cats do go in people's gardens but I just don't know how to stop them.

They have bells on already (three bells each!) and I know that the guy's son has several large water pistols as he has soaked my son with them earlier this summer. The guy just didn't seem to want to listen about doing this.

I know the cats do go in my garden - I have a "bare earth" bed for them to go in and they do seem to spend a lot of time in my garden. They have a litter tray but tbh don't use it much as they are outdoors a lot of the time in the day.

I do know it's horrible to find poo in your garden, I do sympathise with this guy but the way he went about it all just seemed really unreasonable and he wasn't prepared to listen. I asked him, "What do YOU want me to do about it?" and that just seemed to make him worse as he said it wasn't his place to say.

Thanks for your reply, this is really getting me down.