Dawn Chorus Birdblog: Cats (not pooties)

I love my backyard.  I share photos taken there regularly, including last week's goldfinch diary where all the photos were taken from my living room window, looking at my favorite feeder.

That feeder comes down today and will stay down until I can find an answer to my problem.  You see, one of my neighbors has a cat and it's outside most of the time.  Not in their yard, though - in mine.  I love the birds and don't want to lure them to their deaths, so I'm going to give up my happiness for their safety.

If that neighbor stood at their window with a BB gun and picked off birds at my feeder and shat under my bushes and regularly had loud sex on my bench,  no one would blame me for calling the cops and having them hauled away.  But since it's the neighbor's cat who's doing the killing, shitting and screaming, I've been tolerant.  It's not the cat's fault that the neighbor doesn't take care of it.

I've tried to make my yard safe for the birds and less welcoming for the cat without resorting to any overly harsh measures.  No cayenne under the bushes, just a lot of irregularly spaced stones to make it less comfortable to lie down and sleep.  I won't throw stuff, but I will squirt the hose.  The one thing I haven't done yet is invest a lot of money in automatic squirting devices - I'll need a few because of the layout of my tiny yard.  (It seems unfair that I should have to shell out the $$ because someone else is choosing to be irresponsible.)

But then I'm confronted with this:

Former Dark-eyed Junco and Black Phoebe fledgling.

So what do I do?  At this point, I'm seriously thinking of trapping it and bringing it to the no-kill shelter along with a donation to pay for its upkeep for a while.  If I did so, I'd post flyers or drop mailers in every slot on the block saying:  if this is your cat, this is where you'll find it.  (But if I do that, I want the shelter to let me know who claims it so we can talk.)  I don't wish bad things for the cat, but I want this to stop.

Update:  One problem is that I don't know who the owner is, which is why I'm considering the trapping-followed-by-flyers approach.  I'm hoping that would allow me to find out who the owner is so that we can try to reach a solution.  If no one claims the cat despite the flyers, then maybe it's actually a feral?  It just seems way too healthy and well kept for a feral.  It's a long-haired cat and they seem to get pretty ratty pretty quickly when they're on their own.

Coming home tonight and seeing these feathers in the birdbath was the last straw.  

California Towhee feathers, no longer attached to the California Towhee.

If any cat owners can come up with a better solution for me, I'll try it.  A friend suggested a plant known as "Scaredy Cat", a coleus that apparently puts out a smell that cats don't like.  Has anyone heard of it or tried it?  It doesn't sound particularly attractive but I'm willing to plant some if it works.

I've put a lot of effort into making my yard a bird sanctuary in an urban area, and this situation has me truly depressed.  As a result, I think I'm going to take some time off from birdblogging.  I'm headed back to Yosemite (Tuolumne!) at the end of the month, and I'm hoping that will restore my mood.  If anyone would like to guest host the series in the meantime so that we still have a place to talk birds, say something in the comments.