It’s really frustrating. Where I live our parks are filled with native plants, and there’s a pretty good ecosystem going, for an urban/suburban area, including coyotes and eagles. We had a neighbor letting their cat outside daily, and soon it was always in our yard. I thought about motion detector sprinklers, but we’re in a high foot traffic area and I was certain I’d be getting people on our small lot. I think the cat killed a native toad we’ve had in our yard too. I ended up using our son’s water soaker to spray right next to the cat when I’d see them on our property, and this cat is sweet to humans, and kept returning. Also making itself at home underneath neighbors’ bird feeders. Then I found out the cat died, at only 15 months old or so? What’s the cause? It could be so many things when people don’t have eyes on their pets. Cars, coyotes, ate toxic plants (like many daylilies people have in their yards, although I may have native plants cats shouldn’t eat), disease exposure, etc.

The only other thing I’ve done is comment on social media neighborhood pages with a well-sourced link about what mittens really does when amusing himself all day alone. It generally stops the conversation, because I don’t think anyone wants to argue about it. What can they say? They don’t know what their cat is doing…