Blummin cats!

i agree with you cats are a menace they use my backyard as a toilet, years ago i contracted a fungal infection because of cat poo which almost caused deafness in one ear and now i have an almost constant tinitus. cat wreck your flowers dig up your bulbs cause the soil to be acidic killing off anything that is growing there. i am sick of other peoples cats tresspasing on my garden killing the birds i wish there was a law prosecuting cat owners. there way too many cats, people go on about culling birds of prey to conserve some bird species, but maybe it is cat numbers that need to be controlled it my seem a shock to some of you cat lovers but it is either that or lose some of our bird species forever.

I think you can get a device that you put in your garden and it emits a very high pitched noise that only cats can hear. My old next door neighbor had one to stop cats from leaving presents on his drive way gravel and it worked.

I love wildlife, but I love all animals and find it difficult to blame cats for everything, although they do attack and kill wildlife. We must remember that we (the people of the British Isles) brought cats to our land on the shipping routes and encouraged them to stay because they made such good company and they were often kept to control mice numbers.

The most important message is to get cats neutered so the problem of unwanted animals is controlled, get them microchipped so they can be returned to their owners when they are lost, and put a collar on them with a loud bell to give the wildlife a chance to escape. There are so many things that kill birds. Windows in houses and conservatories are the cause of countless deaths a year.

It is quite early in the year still for nesting, so you may still have some birds in your box Adrian. I do sympathise with you, it is heartbreaking to see a cat attack a bird and it must be very hard if your neighbours are keen cat lovers. Wild-Heart is right, you can get a cat scarer. They plug into the mains (you can get ones with batteries, but the battery will always run out at the worst possible moment). They emit a high pitched screech which only young people can usually hear, but will rid a large area of your garden of cats all the while they are switched on. They are motion activated.

Good luck with your nest box.

It is vitally important that both feeders and nestboxes are located where cats cannot get at them easily - this helps with the problem of cats attacking the birds and fledglings.

Apart from that, do all that you can to deter the cats from your garden - there are lots of gadgets, chemicals and ways of doing this. As I said on another thread, I go out and shoo them away whenever I am around - they get fed up eventually and seek peace and quiet in other people's gardens - cats don't like fuss.

[Asking for cats to be controlled in some way at a national level is wishful thinking - it will never happen. Cat owners themselves could, however, be more resonsible in various ways.]

My dog does a good job of scaring the cats away, the little birds don't bother him.  The cats even eat the mealworms that I put down for the ground feeders!! I must have 4 or 5 cats visit my garden.

I tend to only put the ground food down when I am around to stand guard.

My dog never catches the cats, he only chases them away :-)

Like that idea RosyFeathers - cheap citrus air freshners.

I like cats along with all animals but when ever we got a cat they were very lazy. The one next door doesn't bother the birds it just sleeps in a hedge/bush.

Hi all, thanks for all your replies .. what a supportive community!

well, of all the advice posted here, a dog seems the best! my old labrador would have seen them off. He was a bit daft but loved running out into the garden, barking his head off when i said the magic word .. 'cats!' He never got anywhere near them but it did make them weary of venturing into our garden.

I agree, we did bring cats to this land but i'm really not a fan, apart from when they serve some useful purpose! (thanks for getting rid of the rat in my shed big ginger tom). I just feel the damage they are doing to bird stocks in this country negates their usefulness as a domestic pet. Sixty million birds killed each year is unjustifiable, especially when many species are in such decline. The last thing birds need on top of loss of habitat, nesting sites etc. is our fat fluffy friends lurking in the long grass, waiting to pounce. I know there are other factors reducing the number of birds around but surely they don't amount to sixty million deaths!

Thanks for the advice on the electronic cat scarers. Believe it or not, i have tried this. At first it worked extremely well! .. well at least on the young cats (apparently its not so effective on older cats as their hearing is not so good. But after about six months it stopped being effective. i'm not sure why. Maybe it was faulty? I'm now reduced to running out into the garden waving my arms around like a maniac.

I agree with skyblastomega1 - something seriously needs doing, and cat owners need to take some responsibility for what their cats are doing to bird stocks. I don't think it is too much to expect cats to wear cat collars with bells on to give birds a chance of getting away. This could be compulsory from say, march to june. Other than that, i think the RSPB somehow needs to inform the public of how serious the situation is. Could this be done through leaflets? Are the RSPB aware of the problem .. or is it, as i suspect, low down on the list of priorities? Probably.

Well the blue tits seem to have gone. i stood looking up at the box tonight for about half an hour and nothing. I'm going to check the box at the weekend and see what has happened. i even learned a lesson from last year when i laid food on the ground near the box (asking for it!) I made sure this year that there was no food anywhere near the box.

Maybe they have just gone upmarket and found a more desirable abode! who knows.

thanks for the citrus air freshener tip - i'll try this. does it damage the plants.

All the best everyone!