Dear LW are you sure its a cat? Cats more often than not try and hide their droppings by burying them. Dogs will go anywhere cats will normally seek out loose soil like garden beds. If you provide a patch of dug up groung in a corner somewhere away from where your children play chances are that will become your nocturnal visitors preferred site and solve your problem without resorting to the unacceptable option of ending a fellow creatures life for no good reason.

An even better option would be to get a cat of your own. Your children will learn about loving interspecies relationships, your cat will keep other cats out of your yard(cats are territorial)and your cat will go and relieve itself in your neighbours yard whenever it can thus bringing balance to your universe.

Killing is never the answer.

David Edler

Aren't there live traps for cats or similarly-sized animals? Catch, give it a good look-over, and if the critter has no collar and looks like a stray, release it far, far from where you live, or be nice and take it to a shelter. If is has a collar, call the owners. No idea what they can do short of keeping the cat indoors, but it's fair warning.

If your kids are too young to be taught how to scoop up feces in the yard, they are definitely too young to be out there unsupervised . . . .

SERIOUSLY, you should wait until you think of an actual ANSWER before you "reply" to advice !! Your vagraries are pretty unhelpful in this case.

I think the LIVE TRAP idea espoused above is the answer you really wished to think of.

however you feel about the status of animals, the cat might well be the beloved pet of someone else. so by killing it, you would in all likelihood be dealing a great hurt to some other person.

why not try teaching your kids to stay away from animal poop? it's a good life lesson. if they can't do that, they probably shouldn't be allowed outside.

Why not ask the local Humane Society to help you find a humane trap to borrow for a few days? Put some cat food in it, and you are likely to catch whatever is causing the problem, whether that means a cat, possum, raccoon, or anything else that hangs around in your yard. You'd be setting a kind example for your children and your neighbors. If it is a cat with a collar, you may be able to find out who the owner is and ask that person to curb kitty's rambling ways. If you get an anonymous kitty, take it to the shelter. I agree with Cary that killing is not the way to go here. Good luck--I have been coexisting fairly peacefully for ten years with possums, snakes, bats, owls, raccoons, rats, mice, and squirrels--and those are just the animals who have managed to make it INSIDE the house...

Relatively short, to the point and useful, with some pithy observations on life and morality - you should write like this more often.

Agree with a previous writer - cats bury their crap so its quite possible this is not a cat, unless of course the kids are digging in the garden, in which case maybe the LW needs to house train her children.

And to the other letter writers - yes there have been some good suggestions/comments in your msgs (live traps etc), that doesn't mean Cary was wrong.

When I was growing up we learned to avoid poop in the yard. After all, there's no place on earth you can run barefoot without looking down first. Some things about outdoor life are simply uncontrollable, so you have to teach your kids how to handle it.

Okay - even I liked Cary's response and I'm quite grouchy about Cary's responses. Cary, your response was great and hilarious. But the humane trap way was an excellent point. Either way, the LW got some great suggestions!

Oh dear, the cat won't heed your property rights?

People, plants and animals have to coexist. Are you just going to destroy anything that inconveniences you in the future?

Cary says: You're just out of step with our quickly advancing sensitivities and sympathies toward animals. People in rural and semi-rural areas have different customs about killing animals.

Not true. The industrialised rearing and slaughter of animals en masse is a new phenomenon (last fifty years) and it is becoming more intensive as those involved find cheaper and cheaper ways of doing it. eg robots are being used in milk production. Do you think they are sensitive towards cows?

In fact, the majority of people's sensitivities towards the the treatment of the animals they wear and eat has never been blunter, probably because it's a) out of sight and therefore out of mind b) just so irresistably cheap it's inconvenient to think about how or why.

Sure, people in past times were often cruel to their animals, just as they were to children, women, slaves etc. But a lot of people were decent too. They cared about their animals and took care of them, if only because they were a valuable resource and because they had to live with their suffering and look those animals in the eye.

That said, I like Cary's advice about getting a dog. At least with a dog the mess is predictable, and a lot of dogs I know do their poo on their daily walk anyway.

... to let a cat roam free and poop in the neighbor's yard, and not a dog? I've always wondered about that. I have a large dog and a dog-door, she has great fun chasing errant cats out of the yard. But why is it OK for the cats to be there in the first place? If I let my dog roam free through the neighborhood, I'd have animal control on my doorstep giving me a fine, and rightly so. My dog has a collar, a license, a rabies tag, an ID tag, and most important, a FENCE to keep her where she belongs.

I know it's tradition for cats to roam free. But I think it's one that the LW is right to question. I'd say a live trap and a trip to the Humane Society with the offending animal might be in order.

If it turns out to be a raccoon... make sure you can open that live trap from a distance.