Hi everyone,
A question. We have a neighbour who has a lot of cats and no one seems to neuter their cats where we live. They are constantly crying all night too. We don’t want to harm them in anyway but deter them from coming into the garden. Sadly, we have a lot of birds nesting in our garden and it is almost a full time job protecting the baby birds from the cats. Is there some sort of sonic device that works against cats and not other animals.
Thank you.
I’m not sure, but I think they are called "dogs "
The more expensive sonic devices can either be regulated or come pre-regulated for the species, as different frequencies are uncomfortable for different species. A good few years back, we walked around a housing estate with a home-made one , altering the frequency to see if it annoyed dogs or cats. We found the frequency we wanted (for dogs unfortunately) and it keep our front garden free of dog poo for years.
We have one in the loft that seems to deter fouines and I know there are ones for deer but I haven’t any recent experience of makes of device but perhaps someone else does? I was only familiar with the UK ones and it’s a while back now…
Good luck!
Yes …
Used them in UK to deter rabbits but those were cabled.
Here, we don’t have a rabbit problem but there are loads of cats.
We use battery operated deterrents and I block the detector with a tile, if we are using the outside area (whichever).
Cat poo in the gravel is horrible !
and we like birds 
No cats in those guarded areas for easily 2 years (certainly before covid) and I’m sure the batteries must be exhausted by now.
Mind you, I’ve noticed over the years that most cats give our terraces a wide berth even when the batteries are run-out. Even so, I’ll put new batteries in come summer.
EDIT we position each thingy very carefully and at a suitable height to allow other wildlife (hedgehogs/mice etc) to roam freely and it’s been very successful.
OH has checked supplier: Pestbye pack of 2
Stock Photo
Last sighted February 2021 and I reckon he’s used-up all his lives.
Hi, thank you all for the replies. I’ll look into these sonic devices!
I like the look of your device there @stella as it has variable frequency so it should be possible to set it to deter the particular creatures you wish to!
That was one of the reasons we chose it. Frequency and Sensitivity, 2 important things which help to get things just right.
Fox deterrent frequency works, got a call to a block where a resident had installed one without permission in the bin store area for obvious reasons but it was also causing dogs to be sick and cats to cry and try to hide from it at a reasonable distance inside the flats. Although humans are not supposed to be able to hear them it made my ears hurt as I approached it to disable the device.
I must add that the reason I block our deterrents if we are in certain outside areas… is purely to stop them flashing as I move and thus using up the batteries. We can’t hear anything at all (thank heavens).
Back in the UK I could sometimes hear the Rabbit thingy clicking… but it didn’t keep me off the lawn… 
Thankfully whatever frequency is being used, I’m not sensitive to it… although I do have problems with certain other electrical stuff.
As we get older we start to lose our ability to hear higher frequencies. This was used by school children with phones to use a particular frequency as a message alert that they could hear but teachers could not.
Sadly it’s something like an off-balance drill/machine which can make me ill, while no-one else hears anything… so perhaps I’m sensitive to the normally-unheard lower frequencies, although it sounds very high-pitch to me.
Hi Stella. I totally understand. Our next door neighbours have an industrial oil powered boiler. I can hear it at night and it keeps me awake. No one else can hear it. I use a white noise app to mask it.
How well does it work?
Brilliantly. The white noise masks the other noise. There are 3 frequencies that you can play with to get it right. The app is called:
Link.
Look for White noise. Pink noise and brown noise.
You can time it for 9 hours.
Im relaxing with Atmosphere - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.peakpocketstudios.atmosphere
You do have to sleep with white noise though.
Does anyone know of a good dog deterrent? There is a large mutt that defecates on our lawn (too much for a cat or fox) but we haven’t been able to see it yet to find out who owns it. I don’t really want to fence the end of the garden, but at this rate we’re going to have to do so.
Fox poo can be really quite large depending on the size of the fox and it’s diet, usuall difference to dog poo is it is mostly curly at one end.
Oh this did make me chuckle… years ago, my family nick-named me “poo expert” due to my interest in identifying all wildlife traces in our patch of UK.
Yes I do! Vinegar sprayed around your garden dogs don’t like the smell. (Don’t put it on your lawn though).
In the past I had a dog crapping nearly ever day in front of the gate to our drive.
I found the culprits, an old grouchy chap that took his dog for a walk & picked up a bagette from the bakers along the way (his dog was doing the crapping and he let it do his business just in front of our drive).
I sprayed vinegar over the patch of ground & for a week not a crot! I noticed that this chap and his dog had a fixed time table 9.20am, so after a week I armed myself with my sprayer with a mixture of vinegar and water I waited for them to come along. As they duly did. Old grouchy said when approchant, “weed killer you have no weeds”, No I told him, “it’s poison to kill the dogs shitting on the drive”. Never since had problems with dogs shitting in front of our drive. Yes vinegar does the trick: 
