Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have five three toed box turtles that live in my walled in back yard here in Southern California.

Cat(s) keep pooping in the dirt in my yard and then they bury it. Obviously, this is a huge problem for me and my turtles.

Anyone else have/had this problem? Anything that can be done to prevent this. Anything I can put in/on the dirt that WILL NOT harm the turtles? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

my solution: get a bb gun and one-pump it.

Other solutions:
electric fence line,
coyote urine,
orange peels,
water-squirters made for ponds that shoot predators set up in a bucket,
call animal control.

If it's your neighbors cats, let them know that they will not be tolerated and will be destroyed if you catch them in your yard. I don't know about where you live, but where I am that is legal, since it is the responsibility of the owner to keep it off of other people's property. Nobody who cares about a cat lets it run loose.

It sounds like the cats in question don't belong to you. My personal experience, as a gardener, has been that cats really love it when the soil is loosened for them by humans, and don't use harder or tamped down areas (that makes the burying part difficult). So, sometimes the best you can hope for is to have more control over the situation, by making it a less than ideal toilet for them.
Find out who they belong to first, if possible, and see if the owner won't cooperate by providing an area in their yard which has nice loose soil or sand for the cat(s) to use.
If they are strays, see if there are any cat rescue organizations in your area who can help you out: they are frequently much better equipped to handle the situation humanely.

Quoting with permission Darrell Senneke (Yahoo BoxTurtleList) from Fri, 28 Feb 2003 concerning
> "Re - deterrents - water"
>> Its called the Watchman
>>
>> This piece of equipment is able to sense an animal by recognizing both
>> its movement and body heat. After activation, this remarkably effective
>> deterrent releases a harmless three second burst of water through a
>> pulsating sprinkler head with the accompanying noise associated with
>> water being turned on. This causes unwanted intruders to depart the
>> area. Its peak operating conditions are at night when unwanted animal
>> presence is at a maximum. There are two versions of this on the market
>> that I have found. Water De-Fence^(TM) and Scarecrow^(TM), both seem to
>> meet the same specifications. They consist of a hose attachment at the
>> bottom, attached to a sixty-centimeter aluminum pipe on which sits a
>> battery operated motion/heat detector and a pulsating sprinkler head.
>> When motion or heat is detected a valve is opened which allows the blast
>> of water to flow to the sprinkler. The mechanism automatically resets
>> after each use. This is available from finer gardening catalogs and is
>> effective against most predators. As an added bonus this may also have
>> effectiveness against door-to-door solicitors.
>>
>> links:
>> http://www.tesco-shopping.com/scarecrow.htm
>> http://www.properpet.com/scarecrow.htm
>> http://shop.store.yahoo.com/atrendyhome/scarwatspray.html
>> http://www.chelonia.org/Articles/secure.htm