cats pooping on my carport roof, any advice?

JD, a prophet emerging from the wilderness.  Concise plan.

Tereza we trust you will overcome all in your path, yes for eye protection and respiratory protection

jd hutton wrote: solar-charged 'Robo-Owls',  

OMG these are absolutely marvelous!!! I want one just to freak out my neighbors (and possibly the dog). We've often talked about putting something on the roof to make the neighbors talk but usually we're talking green plastic alien. But they don't even have glowing eyes!!!

Rico Loma wrote:JD, a prophet emerging from the wilderness.  Concise plan.

Hah! Well, yanno.. 'Locusts (properly roasted) and Wild Honey' isn't too shabby of a Meal, really..  

I just see it as a low-impact / cost way to - 'on demand' - hopefully spook them into 'associating' that spot with the Owl-terrors - especially after a 'couple cycles' of interactions. Hopefully, that 're-education program' will groom them to at least consider Other people's carports, instead.  That's the Theory, anyway..

Tereza Okava wrote:..OMG... I want one just to freak out my neighbors...

Haha! Well, I'm sure everyone here would 'pitch in' to post Bail for ya..

But, kidding aside, the Other nice feature is you Can turn off just the Sound, so.. Motion-Detection / Flashing eyes / Head-movement is still active - just no sound to piss off the 'hood (If it comes to that..

Worst case, you could fill these with 500 Firecrackers each and re-route the DC-leads going to the internal Speaker - to a small 'e-Match', nestled into the first 'Crackers fuse, internally - That should take care of the Cats 're-education'.

Not that I would have a Clue about Doing anything like that, mind you...

jd hutton wrote:
Worst case, you could fill these with 500 Firecrackers each and re-route the DC-leads going to the internal Speaker - to a small 'e-Match', nestled into the first 'Crackers fuse, internally - That should take care of the Cats 're-education'. :)  

It would also save me the trouble of cleaning the turds off... in the same style of that town in Oregon that exploded the whale that beached there.... what could possibly go wrong?

(you don't sell new carports, do you?)

Tereza Okava wrote:
(you don't sell new carports, do you?)

Heh, no, Sorry - But happy to let ya borrow my Umbrella!

Interesting challenge.  I would expect that the regular visits are related to scent posting, a practice by several animals, especially predators, to mark their territory to keep the competition down.  I would expect that being able to remove the scent might reduce the problem and would provide a better starting point for some of the more inventive methods suggested.  I rather think that using bird netting such as is used for protecting fruit bushes might be useful. I do not believe it needs to be held off the top of the carport.  Holding it up is good in gardens for deer as they hate to have anything grabbing their feet.  I often use that to protect spring plantings, generally successfully and I have a ton of deer around the farm.  

Most cats like to dig after defacation to attempt burial of the feces.  A bird net would really give them fits if they attempted to scratch in it.  Another item I used to keep a cat off the table at night was to turn a plastic rug protector upside down.  There are lots of tiny little sharp prongs to hold the protector in place on a rug and my cat, at least, could not stand them.  I would not start by covering the entire roof, just a 3 foot or one meter wide section along the access to the roof should do.

The predator birds in New York City are peregrine falcons and I have seen them in action.  They have been keeping the local pidgeon population on its toes and off the streets quite nicely.  They used to nest on our building in a special frame and it was really interesting to be able to view such a fascinating creature on a regular basis.

So we pressure washed the roof on Saturday and decided the best option was to try smells. We put down vinegar. Then we immediately had torrential rain and off it all went!! le sigh.

Sunday I got some mothballs and threw them up there, after much hand-wringing and self-guilt. This led to a decrease from the usual 10+ craps to just one.

Yesterday I ran into the neighbor lady and said I had to apologize to her for stinking up the neighborhood (I would rather smell a stable that hasn't been mucked out in 6 months than mothballs).
We chatted a bit and I soon learned that her house is even worse and they hadn't even noticed. It was sunny Sunday afternoon and they had a cookout in the front of their house and noticed a stench (not the mothballs), looked up and saw that her glass carport was literally covered in shit.
She went to *her* neighbor, who has two cats that run around, and told him he could come and clean it up or he would soon be down two cats. I think there are waaaay more than two cats involved here, but maybe this problem might be on its way to getting sorted.

In the meantime the rain continues!

Tereza Okava wrote:... It was sunny Sunday afternoon and they had a cookout in the front of their house and noticed a stench (not the mothballs), looked up and saw that her glass carport was literally covered in shit.

At least you've got two homeowners on the lookout now! I have heard that if a litter box gets too stinky, cats will refuse to use it and find another spot. Your roof may have been 3rd choice and if they cat owner deals with his part of the problem, that will hopefully at least help.

Does the rain actually wash the poop off, or just the vinegar and moth balls?

Jay Angler wrote:Does the rain actually wash the poop off, or just the vinegar and moth balls?

Oh no!! The rain just adds the perfect amount of moisture to make a wet sticky mess of poo that gets baked on when the sun actually comes out!!

We were able to get it off by spraying/soaking, scrubbing with a brush and then pressure washing (which the manufacturer specifically says not to do, but I figure at this point who even cares, this surface is toast). The neighbor lady said she had to get a spade kind of thing and scrape it off the glass, and that it still needs the pressure washer.

Working with smells, I wonder if ammonia would work.
It isn't as strong at a distance so the neighbor might not notice as much.

craig howard wrote:Working with smells, I wonder if ammonia would work.

that's a great idea, i hadn't thought about it (probably because I haven't seen ammonia in a store in a long time, but surely it's still around).
The mothball thing is getting tiresome- first task of the day is picking up all the little bastards who have washed off the roof after the heavy rains.
Bright side, rain keeps the smell down a bit.
Tomorrow it is supposed to clear up for a few days, so I guess then we'll see what really is going to happen.

I had a problem with racoons overturning my freshly installed sod in my front and back yards.
One of the things I tried, that did not work for racoons was a sonar device that would spray
water at the intruders.

I'm thinking buy a security lamp, and in addition to turning on a light, might activate the
sprinklers, or something that would vibrate the roof.

Another thing I would try on the theory that because there is a buildup of poop and smell
on the roof, the cats seek it out as the community bathroom is to start with cleaning the root
and then spraying concentrated vinegar or ammonia on there to remove the smell.

Another thing would be a security camera that activates something when it sees movement
in a certain area and then having a person available to react whenever a cat would appear.

I am not a cat lover, especially a feral cat that howls or carries disease or threatens birds or
squirrels, so I would not be adverse to using paintball gun or any other kind of gun that
would either hurt the cat non-fatally, or mark it with paint, or even contained some kind of
horrible smell that cats did not like.

That's about it for mer.

I wonder if these folks will ship to your location:

https://www.havahart.com/critter-ridder-motion-activated-animal-repellent-sprinkler-5277-all-questions

I saw this product at the big box store for $50.00.

Anne Miller wrote:I wonder if these folks will ship to your location:

https://www.havahart.com/critter-ridder-motion-activated-animal-repellent-sprinkler-5277-all-questions

I saw this product at the big box store for $50.00.

Thanks for the suggestion. Next time I go to the US I will know to stock up on things like this!

I bought some repellant granules that are less toxic than the mothballs (they smell like rotten leeks mixed with rotten lemon peels, the dog doesn't like them either) and I don't know if it's that or the fact that the neighbor escalated her threats to the cat-owning neighbor (heard that from a few houses away), but the poops have decreased drastically. Yesterday there were none, today I haven't looked yet but the cats didn't wake me up during the night.
I put the granules on the garden wall on one side and will do the same on the other side. It is, of course, supposed to rain every day now for a while (spring storms) but I can only do what I can do.
The granules are small and very round and come rolling down the roof, so I put them in little sachets I threw up there. Gave some to the neighbor to do the same.

I want to read the saga of the heroic roof cats and the horrible trolls that live under their toilet-bridge written from the cats' perspective. ;-)