Steve and I don’t have any pets. I can’t speak for Steve, but for me personally, reason numero uno why I don’t really even want a pet is poop. I have zero interest in picking up poop. You can ask my parents. They will tell you, when I was younger and we had a dog, I don’t think I ever performed “poop patrol” in the backyard.
The weather was nice out this weekend, so I spent a fair amount of time working in the yard, and let me tell you, I ended up picking up more than my fair share of poop! In the backyard, I believe I found cat poop in seven different locations. And this was not like the cat dug a hole, pooped, and tried to bury it; this poop was just sitting there. Like, right on the cement patio outside the garage door. And on the retaining wall. And on top of the lava rock ground cover.
Wanting to minimize future incidents of pet poop in our yard, I used the google to see if anyone out there on the interwebs had any suggestions. I did find one site that had a multitude of them. My favorite suggestion was placing “pot plants” in the area where the kitty is pooping. I’m pretty sure the author meant potted plants. We do not have any pot plants. None. If we did, we certainly would not be placing them around the backyard where they might be visible to law enforcement from outside of our property. Or to our friend the FBI agent when he comes over to visit. But like I said, no pot plants here.
Other than that, there seem to be a number of viable options. The only problem is, these poops were not isolated to specific places, they were just randomly all over the yard. So placing things like cinnamon or citrus peel or commercial cat repellent in the area where the cat is pooping pretty much means putting it all over the yard. I’m thinking of maybe putting different repellents in different areas of the yard to test which are most effective. Does anyone have experience with this? What works and what doesn’t?
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The only sure thing that I have found to work is a dog!!! No more cat poop – LOL
Erin, since it sounds like you have so much “refuse” you might have more than a cat visiting . . . think raccoon, skunk, turkey,etc. One thing that we tried which was not “toxic” was a green apple spray . . . apparently cats don’t like the smell. I know that there are commercial cat, deer, rabbit, skunk, etc. multiple-animal repellents out there but since we don’t have a lot of cats wandering around we tend to be more focused on deer repellents. I have also seen a “spiked” contraption that you can “bury” in the ground so that when the stray cat digs it encounters the spikes and will look elsewhere . . . of course that could get pricey and time consuming since the varmint(s) seem to not dig but just do it. 🙂 (My experience has been that most cats exhibit an innate preference to dig and cover . . . that’s why I’m thinking something other than cat. Seen any foxes lately? 🙂