Do your neighbour’s cats use your garden as their toilet?
Even when my dog was around I felt like every cat in the area was doing just this. And it’s
disgusting.
I’m not a keen gardener, and getting feline faeces on my hands as I work was genuinely off
putting.
It’s not just the smell, but it’s the thought of the germs. If your child fell onto your border, and got some buried cat poop onto their skin, and later put their fingers into their mouth there is a
long list of bacteria that they could theoretically become infected with.
And there is also the risk of catching the roundworm parasite of cats, Toxocara cati. Like the roundworm of dogs this parasite can infect people, but its larvae get lost inside the human body. They can end up trying to make a home in the lungs, liver or eye.
When a person ingests a small number of cat or dog worm eggs they usually pass without causing infection. But even so, there is a risk to anyone who fails to wash their hands regularly, and this risk is higher in those whose immune systems are not working perfectly.
From my end I am constantly reminding all cat owners to ensure that their cat’s poop does not contain any worm eggs by managing a regular anti-parasite worm treatment. But how can you protect your garden from the cats you are not caring for?
There is some excellent advice on the cats protection website about this, from which plants to grow that will repel cats, to how to kindly shoo them away. Cats prefer uncovered, dry soil to toilet on, so a good trick is to sprinkle crushed egg shells, pebbles, bark or twigs over an area that you have just weeded to keep them off.
My favourite idea is the lion pee/dung fertiliser you can buy, which is repellent to cats. Somehow cats must know when they are outgunned by a more massive feline, despite never having visited Africa!
And don’t forget to replace the cover on the kids’ sandpit after every use.
Have you read our article on – What does it mean when a cat suffers from a rodent ulcer? Click HERE
