UKH

I think we've covered this before but I wanted to check again what can be done.

I spend a lot of time in my office, more so recently for obvious reasons.  I have a huge passion for wildlife and spend a fortune on feeding the birds a range of food which is hung for tits and finches etc and some stuff which is more ground level for blackbirds etc.  I know almost each blackbird that visits.

There has been a new person move in across the road and their black cat has decide that it wants to spend time in our garden.  Its about 50mtres from my garden.  It also shits in my garden.

I have seen it hunt a few times without success but I have just witness it corner a blackbird against my house and take it away.  Very upsetting.

I quite like cats (apart from the crapping and hunting) so don't want to harm it and I have an elderly cat of my own (she doesn't hunt and never has) which means putting stuff in the garden would upset her too. I want to ask her to keep her cat in but that isn't fair to the cat and you can hardly ask a cat to keep its distance.  I have a dog which barks when it sees it and I have tried to scare it away but it keeps coming back.

Any thoughts please?

I had a cat who never really showed any interest in hunting birds, but after she saw me upset after a break up she started to bring me ‘gifts’ almost to cheer me up. The heart ache heeled but my cats newfound lust for blood continued...

I started off with a belled collar, then a second bell and finally a the two bells on her collar plus a brightly coloured bandana. This seemed to do the trick. She was a clever huntress. 
 

This solution allowed her to roam and explore whilst the birds were safe when alerted to her presence.

If you are friendly with the neighbour, could you suggest something like this?
 

I dont know them at all.

Waterpistol or a eagle owl.

I dont have an owl knocking about but I do have a super soaker.  Problem is, it always gets away before I can get near it.

We gave up putting collars on our cat, after she lost the 3rd one!

Only ever bought in a couple of birds, one I managed to release unharmed, but seemed to do pretty well catching mice.

Does your elderly car go out much and would one of those ultrasonic deterrents in the front garden keep the neighbours cat away?

Introduce yourself. Explain the situation.

And if that doesn’t work use the super soaker against the cat and the owner for being unreasonable...

Trap it in a box trap. If you do not want to kill it, give it the Guantanmo treatment: Soak it with a mains pressure hose for five minutes before releasing it, and watch it disappear from your garden forever.

Waterboarding the cat from three houses down the road worked at my parents place, it takes a large detour ever since it got the treatment. Problem is there are five or six others....

Cats are vermin, in our garden I saw cats kill one greenfinch, one great spotted woodpecker, and two blackbirds this year alone.

CB

Just one of the handy pet care tips on the CIA website!  

I think I would be laying landmines by that point.

The cats are laying  "landmines", too.

CB

The cat is following its instinct - they are top predators  - why are we surprised they kill things, its not their fault.  It’s ours for bringing them into our homes then being appalled when they revert to type!!  Imagine the chaos a pack of huskies could cause if they got into a sheep flock.  

A cat savaged a robins nest in May garden, all the chicks mauled out and left for dead. Same last time it nested a few years back. 

I like cats too and that story saddens me - blackbirds are pretty vulnerable at the moment - ours are going through the moult and when you get very close the pair of them are missing so many feathers round the head they look very sick.   The new growth seems to arrive at the tail and work backwards up to the head - lucky to see this as ours come and ask for food.  The male has completed his 3rd breeding season with us and was around in the year before very tentatvely and shyly singing.

As I said, while I like cats a lot I worry about them coming in our garden.

You could cat proof your garden to keep other cats out? We have moderate sized garden and have cat proofed the rear garden to keep our two cats in. The main reason was to stop them wandering onto a nearby busy road, and a spin off from that is that they don't hunt and crap in neighbours' gardens. It also keeps other cats out of our garden, so less squabbling and caterwauling, a win win for all! It wasn't unduly expensive and the cats still have plenty of space to roam within the fencing.

There is a visiting robin, who sits on the fence out of reach and "talks" to the cats, one of whom, now "talks" back at him!!

The fencing is 6ft high close timber boarding with 18" of chicken wire running all round the top angled in at 45 degrees, which is enough to deter attempts to climb it.

Cat proofing the garden / supersoaking will mean the cat just hunts elsewhere. Sounds like the bell collar is a decent partial solution.

This study shows some pretty outrageous numbers:

https://www.mammal.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Domestic-Cat-Predation...

I wonder how much the domestic cat population has increased since 1997?

Worth checking the raw data- 2 hamsters included!

It would solve the OP's problem, which is what he asked.

The ideal solution would be for the cat owner(s) to cat proof their own garden(s)

I occasionally have the same issue. I'm surprised the cat comes back repeatedly what with you having a dog. I wind my dog up when I see a cat out back with "Who's that in your garden. Is that a puss cat?" She goes into her hyper alert state and then I just open the French window. She does the rest and the cat is rarely is seen in the garden again.

One of the neighbour's cat  also used to take an unhealthy interest in my bird feeders too. That said, it had a very close shave with the dog last year necessitating the introduction of a garden table as chicane to slow the dog down and give puss a sporting chance to leave ... 😬

The dog bounced off the fence just behind the cat as it jumped for the top. My heart was in my mouth for a second. The cat was fine thank God, the dog was fine, but it was all a bit too close. The table has solved the issue. The cat is away over the fence before the dog gets beyond the terrace now.

Like you, I like cats, just not crapping in my garden or hunting birds from the feeders!

Oh come on Tom, can't you implicate Westminster in this too? It's almost as if it's not you posting  

Ive thought about cat proofing but that also means hedgehog proofing. We have a family that pootles between me and a neighbours garden.

Water.

We once had an issue with a neighbours cat coming into our house to bully our cat. After it got trapped under a clothing basket and an entire bucket of water over the bonce, it kept its distance. I'm sure the effectiveness will vary from cat to cat though, you could try it out and see if it's effective.

You might just have to learn to live with it if the cat isn't deterred though.

Why do you think the Scottish wildcat population is in decline? RSPB covert ops with MI5 training water boarding the Scots wildlife icons in order to preserve the grouse for fat English oil thieving bastards. 

They are actually not top predators, they are in the upper middle of the food chain naturally. This is why they do a lot of looking for safe places to hide in or be at height in and why they are so skittish - the whole time they are hunting or doing whatever else, they are trying to keep an eye out for anything bigger which is going to eat them.

As a teenager, my cousin bought me an "airzooka" for christmas.  It's a toy that looks like a wastepaper basket and shoots a wave of air.  Quite suprising effective range indoors or on a still day.

In my twenties, I asked my mates if they wanted it, because its plastic junk taking up space in our house that I don't want to just send to landfill and their housecates were getting wise to the squirt bottle deterrant.  They would chew cables or scratch the sofa right up until you got into close range with the squirt bottle, or sometimes just ignore it entirely.
We tried it once and decided it had to go back to my house, the test cat jumped a solid two feet off the ground and three feet sideways when the air washed over it.  We put the toy down and gave the cat a fuss to apologise, he then gingerly squared up to it, side on, back arched and hissing, went to bop it but bottled it at the last second and did another terrified sideways leap away from this inanimate object.

Might be woth keeping in mind as an alternative to the supersoaker.

Also, head up on hedgehogs.  We have a couple that started visiting this summer, sweeping up under the birdfeeders and started to read up on our spiky friends.  Apparrently the mealworms they were snaffling are extremely bad for them being too high in phosphates and leading to addiction and bone problems, they started coming during the day get their fix, earlier and earlier in the afternoon!  The peanuts, sunflower seeds and suet in some of the other bird mixes we had are also not being great, too high in fat.  Don't know what yours are on but thought it worth mentioning.  We've tried to reign in spillage from the feeders and have set up a beetle hotel, then a couple of times a week shared a teaspoon of chicken with them or turfed the odd worm out of the composter.

I love cats and always will, however we have a number living near us which like to crap on our lawn and attack the birds.

I've tried a few things but nothing has been effective as a filled water bottle kept by both front and back doors with little holes drilled in. When we spot a cat in the garden we quietly open the door and spray them. We've seen a big reduction in bird attacks and unwanted brown curlers.

We have too many cats on the premises, and what they get up to is a source of concern. does it help to keep them well fed ??

But I wonder how feline-avian mortality compares against environmental induced mortality. In the UK agricultural practice is noted to reduce insect availability etc

Right now in the States we have this avian mass-mortality phenomena - most alarming:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54183430