w.g.s.hamm wrote:
"JK" wrote in message
news:1112783080.483a4fb009585c28216fa9a5e8406e2e@t eranews...

Just out of curiosity. Once you have stopped the cats from coming into

your

garden, what will you do about wild birds shitting, hedgehogs, mice,

rats

and other beasties all pooing where your crawling infants go?



I don't have any problems with them.

but you should, really. Rat urine cannot be seen and weils disease which
can be caught from it could potentially kill a small child :0(
Salmonella and psittacosis from wild pigeons is also nasty.
Personally my son grew up with animals, no doubt ingested hair, dander,
etc, probably rolled in cat or dog poo occasionally when he and his friends
would trash my land digging trenches (aided by several dogs) to play war
games and grew up fit, strong and healthy.
I have always had rather a lot of animals, cats included, and so did my
son's friends who were mainly neighbouring farmer's children and had
enormous fun playing at flicking wet cow pats at one another with whippy
twigs. Apart from sensible precautions like washing hands before eating we
didn't worry too much. None of them was ever seriously ill with other than
the usual childhood stuff. My nephew however was coddled by his obsessively
clean mother and when they visited, she wouldn't even allow the child down
onto the floor in my house because dogs and cats had walked there. He grew
up with a myriad of health issues from glue ear, to sinus problems etc and
was a sickly child.



Last weekend I removed a dozen
binbags full of crap-inpregnated bark chippings. It was cat crap.

I believe you. Bark chippings in a nice deep heap is an ideal cat toilet.
But also as I mentioned before, don't get too hung up on it. Your babies
will come across other germs in the garden and survive and develop a healthy
immune system, heck they may even want a pet cat of their own one day :-)
Then you will join the legion of us antisocial, supposedly,less than nice
human beings who own felines and love them.



I don't disagree with anything you say, I grew up with animals and I
believe the developing immune system needs chalenge. But as with
anything, it's a question of degree. We have a small-ish city garden and
approximately 1/3 of it is bark chippings. These ares were literally
full of kittycrap. I don't mind the odd turd, but I want to deter the
daily use as a litter tray. That much cat poo does pose a health hazard,
and it also stinks. No-one should be trying to tell me to put up with
it, get over it etc, would you have wanted the neighbouring farmer to
stash *all* his cow manure in your garden?