Personal Experience with Cats

When i read an article saying that the domestic cat was responsible for the slaughter of 70 million birds (mainly garden birds) in the UK I was horrified. But after battling with the plague of cats in my neighbourhood for the last 8 years, i can fully understand the numbers quoted. When the law and the onus of responsibility was shifted aganst dog owners , there was a gradual switch in the type of pets people owned. In my neighbourhood there was an explosion of cats and the dawn chorus of birds that we enjoyed so much went silent.
I tried to encourage the birds back by providing food for them but stopped after two years after seeing cats capture 7-8 birds and that was what i saw over the weekends when i wasn't working, God knows what they slaughtered when i wasn't home.(how to stop cats killing)
There was also the problem of cats mess, this meant that my children couldn't play in the garden on many occasions because they would have been smeered all over as they played, although i would walk around with a shovel collecting the cat mess that these selfish murderous animals leave in my garden, it's a never ending battle because as all cat owners know, cats will always try and deposit their mess in someone else's garden, and cat owners rely on this, so the problem becomes someone else's problem.
Since that time of stopping feeding the birds i have been looking for non lethal ways of keeping cats out of my garden and here is a list of what i have found.

Plants that have a fragrant foliage. Cats hate pungent smells on themselves so spreading these plants around your borders would help to deter cats in that part of the garden.
Bottles of water scattered about the garden also discourages them, something to do with the electro-magnetic field that water gives off, perhaps it makes their whiskers tickle.
I shovel up their mess and place it where i find the cats entering the garden they, like me cannot stand the stink of their own mess.
Placing cat statues amongst the shrubs can also deter some timid cats.
You can buy lion dung, that is a succesful pussy deterrent. Then there are a long list of chemical cat deterrents which you can purchase although it can get expensive if like me, you are surrounded by cats.
There are some electronic ultra sonic cat deterents available which seem to work with some cats.
As for protecting your seedlings or newly planted plants, then sticking twigs in the newly dug soil can keep cats off. if i can get some i also sprinkle holly leaves and bramble off cuts this usually keeps the cats off freshly dug ground, although one year after i had covered all my bets they did their business in some flower pots destroying some pinus pinea seedlings.

Another terrible price that i see played out in my garden is in the spring when the frogs come to spawn in my little pond, i would never believe the blood curdling screams that the frogs make when caught by the neighbourhood cats.
Cat owners claim that their cats are intelligent so branding them as murderous evil swine killing for fun is not far off the mark considering that they usually have a full belly of kiti-kat when they go out on the rampage.
I THINK IT IS NOW TIME for some decent restrictions put on the ownership of domestic cats, all cats should be registered and licensed, and a restriction on numbers in any one area should be imposed, this could be administered by the RSPCA who with their experience could be trusted to protect the wildlife and also to be sympathetic to cat owners who cared for their cats properly. This should also help to reduce the numbers of wildlife that are slaughted in any one area.
E.mail your MP. I have a friend who has 3 cats, he once lived in an upstairs flat where his cats couldn't go out and he used a cat litter tray, he moved to a house with a garden and in the first week the cats brought home 2 dead birds he was so horrfied when he realized that this was only the begining of the slaughter that he got out the cat tray and banned his cats from being able to run riot by keeping them in. Obviously he loved his cats but in all common sense he decided that he also had responsibility towards the local wildlife, i only wish all cat owners were like him instead of shirking their responsibilities to the wildlife and their neighbours.
There has been much debate in recent years in the UK about the disapearence of the Sparrow, well once you discover that the sparrow is a ground feeder you can quickly work out where all the sparrows have gone. I know that the last Sparrow i have seen in my garden was in the mouth of the neighbours Cat. Some new evidence regarding the parasite that lives in cats Toxoplasma gondii has recently been discovered, here is an article reporting the findings.