I’m sympathetic to person who tried to blow up neighbour’s cat

Fringed with wildflowers, shaded by fruit trees, and with a sprawling lush green lawn, our back garden is a thing of beauty.

Since moving to rural Suffolk from London four years ago, it has become my husband’s pride and joy. He spends hours painstakingly dead-heading, watering and tending to the flowerbeds, which are filled with primroses, snowdrops and fragrant winter jasmine.

And, come rain or shine, our two young sons can be found out there most afternoons, kicking a ball around, playing in the sandpit or tumbling in the grass.

Yet in recent months our country’s idyll has been under siege.

The invaders? A trio of grubby cats, owners unknown, who have started treating it as their own.

Sidling in through gaps in the garden hedge, often in the dead of night, the mangy moggies have begun to nibble our plants, devour our bird feed and – most grossly of all – defecate all over the lawn.

Stinking piles of the stuff now appear at nightly intervals; so much so that my husband has embarked on a rigorous schedule of 7am patrols, shovel in hand, to dispose of their nocturnal waste.

I know it’s not fox scat, by the way, because I have Googled it – it’s the wrong shape (and, sorry, smell, too).

I will never forget the day, last August, when my three-year-old son let out a yowl of disgust, upon realising he’d trodden – barefoot, no less – in a mound of cat poo.

No amount of bathing, scrubbing or disinfecting that foot could make him return to the garden for several weeks.

That, I decided, was enough. For the past five months, determined to put a stop to their foul behaviour, we have waged an all-out war on the neighbourhood felines.

There is no remedy we haven’t tried; no gadget we haven’t rigged up; no internet forum we haven’t scoured for advice on how to rid our garden of the scourge.

Nothing, I am sad to report, has worked. Our bucolic haven has become a glorified litter tray – and the cats continue their nightly assault, unabashed.

And so I have a shred of sympathy for the parish councillor who, enraged by the anti-social activities of a neighbour’s cat, is accused of to trying to blow it up – with a firework.

James Garnor, of Whittlebury Parish Council near Towcester in Northamptonshire, resigned last week after footage emerged of Suki, an 11-year-old tabby, leaping from a bird box in his garden as an explosion engulfed it in flames and smoke.

Suki, accused of scoffing food Mr Garnor was leaving out for the birds, escaped injury but for some singed whiskers.

Of course, I would never condone cruelty or violence to animals, and am glad Suki wasn’t harmed (though her owner says the attack dented her confidence and affected her behaviour). And it is an offence to cause unnecessary suffering to cats, under the Animal Welfare Act 2006.

But there is no doubt Mr Garnor, who has not commented, must have been at his wits’ end to commit such a reckless and potentially dangerous act. It was, his supporters say, merely meant to deter the moggy – not harm it.

Pulling back the curtains on a sunny morning to a lawn spattered with cat excrement, there have been moments I, too, have contemplated drastic measures.

For we’re not the only ones who’ve had to stop using our garden. This little corner of the countryside, once alive with badgers, muntjac deer, squirrels and sparrows – is now eerily quiet, abandoned by the creatures who once called it home.

Should we pave over it all? Fence ourselves in, Fort Knox-style, to keep them out? Sell up and move north of the border – where the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission has, controversially, suggested banning cats in certain areas to protect wildlife.

I’m not alone in my despair. An online search reveals millions of newspaper articles, how-to videos and frantic forum posts begging for help to rid gardens of felines.

The first problem with my cat conflict is we don’t know exactly who they belong to – so I can’t march over to their homes and give the owners a piece of my mind.

I’d like to think they would be mortified if they knew what their pets were doing in our garden, but they seem blissfully unaware.

We live off a small country lane, so you’d think it would be easy to work out whose moggies they are, yet nobody seems to know.

They look clean(ish) and well fed – the biggest, a grey-black striped tabby, has a sizeable belly – but wander indiscriminately through gardens, over patios and into sheds, but never approach a cat-flap. None has a collar.

Wherever home is, they seem to prefer ours. So it’s us against the cats, not their humans, and they are thoroughly immune to reason and persuasion.

This leads on to problem number two. We have, since the first foul signs of their invasion, tried everything to reclaim our garden. We’ve stopped leaving out bird food, so there’s nothing to tempt them – but they come anyway.

We’ve dotted clear bottles filled with water around the flowerbeds; an old trick I remember from my childhood. Apparently most cats don’t like seeing their reflection, so are deterred when the sun shines – but these preening tabbies seem to love it.

We’ve sprayed the soil with vinegar (pungent but ineffective); mixed concoctions of mustard, black pepper and cinnamon to sprinkle on the lawn (which did more to damage the grass than the cats); and used up my expensive diffuser oils to repel them with strong scents (a total waste).

My husband even bought a £75 hi-tech, motion-sensing cat scarer, which blasts high-pitched sounds and flashing LED lights at them, and is, according to the instruction manual, ‘foolproof’.

We thought it had worked until – squelch, all over his new Barbour wellies – it turned out it had not. Foolproof it may have been; but not catproof.

Lately, I’ve gone more old-school in my approach. I’m keeping my sons’ Super-Soaker water guns by the back door so I can aim a jet of icy cold water at any invader.

I’ve taught my elder son (who is allergic to cats) to hiss aggressively and bang the window if he sees a feline in the garden. This does frighten them – but usually makes his little brother cry.

Once, in a fit of pique during dinner, my dad even threw a hot baked potato at one. It missed – but gave us a few days’ reprieve before they dared return.

If you’re a cat owner reading this, you may be outraged by our behaviour. But we are, believe it or not, animal lovers – and it is only through desperation, and sheer frustration, that it’s come to this.

For now, we have reached an uneasy detente.

The combination of hissing and window-banging seems to have deterred the cats from doing the dirty on our lawn for now, at least (though not our flower beds).

But they still slink into the garden most evenings, and peer haughtily into the lit house, as if asking: ‘What are you going to do about it?’

I won’t go so far as to say I’m sleeping with a water pistol under my pillow, but it’s always to hand – fully-loaded and ready to fire.