Legal Rights

I am part of an HOA and have a neighbor who lets her cats in my yard, front and back, and they cause damages to plants and wildlife. I have asked on more than one occasion for the HOA help. They were unable to help. I put up plastic bird spike on the fence that we share and this has stopped the cats from coming in my back yard, now the HOA wants them removed but still won't help on keeping the cats off my property. What are my legal rights in this situation?

Tash,

There are repellants you can put around your property that may help. See your local nursery to see what they recommend.

A dog always helps.

If the cats are not licensed, or are being mistreated, you can call animal control.

You can request permission from the Association to place the spikes back up, pointing to the issue of the cats and the complaints you have made to the HOA and animial control.

I suspect that you and your neighbor don't see eye to eye on this issue. Therefore, talking with them may not help but you could try.

As Larry pointed out, State laws vary. Animal Control may be able to explain what you can or can't do.

You could place out humane traps (that traps the cats alive) and turn them into animal control (of course this won't help the situation between you and your neighbor).

Those are some of the options.

If it were me, I would try repellants, contacting animal control and seek permission to place the spikes back on your fence.

http://landscaping.about.com/od/pestcontrol/a/cat_repellents.htm

Tash,

Many years ago we had a complaint about one of our cats who would go several houses down the street and chase the birds that fed in the yard of the elderly homeowner. We solved the problem by installing our own bird feeder in our backyard. The cat stayed home after that.

You might consider making a gift to the cat's owner of a bird feeder and some bird seed. For whatever reasons, your neighbor's cat finds your yard more attractive than his own.

If you are feeding birds or other wild animals you may be bringing some of the problems on yourself. When I lived in Tucson a few years back, the animal control people advised against feeding birds or squirrels. They said the leftover seeds would fall to the ground and attract mice; that, in turn, would attract snakes and other predators like bobcats. As they said, you cannot feed just the cute ones.

I have read all the CC&R's and have not been able to find anything that refers to this issue specifically or generally. I have not been able to speak with the HOA over the phone either. So the CC&R's for our HOA state/refer to what the HOA is responsible for(finances, cleaning of empty lots etc.) and so I don't believe I am breaking any regulations and according to our City Code as well, these spikes are not breaking any codes.

The weird part is we (HOA and myself)have spoken, via email, about my bird spikes on my fence to keep cats from jumping over and in those past emails there has been no request for removal either.

As for my neighbor with the cats, she does try to observe them when they are outside of her fence, but she is not a very friendly or pleasant lady to speak with in general. I have gone out of my way to be nice to her in the hopes it would make her actually care about keeping her cats out of my yard. But for now the only thing working are the spikes in question.

Does this sounds like I still need to remove them? To me it sounds like it could be a visibility issue, but the spike are clear and very hard to see when passing by. They don't obstruct anything. From what I have read I don't have to remove them, but I don't know personally how far the HOA could/would take this issue. I just want to have my simple quality of life as it was, which was perfectly fine with me.

I have an tied in question to this issue.

1. They HOA has asked that I apply to keep these spikes on my fence so the board can look at my application. The only board member on our HOA is the person (owner of building company) who builds up here. The HOA community management has nothing to do with the board, but the builder won't allow the neighbors up here to create an HOA board on our own, even after multiple attempts to request so, the builder states the land needs to be more occupied, how can we get our own HOA of which are people who live up here?

2. Does anyone have any helpful suggestions for me while I fill out my application to keep my spikes on my adjoining section of my fence? Any advice, suggested documents anything like that?

TashN Oregon : You have asked "what are your my legal rights ?"

1 - Trying to reconcile what you have said above about the plastic bird spikes, it appears that you have now been asked by your HOA /whomever to remove your (plastic) spikes from what you call a "shared" fence. You are also asked to concurrently submit an application to re-install those spikes (or whatever ).

Even if you believe that you see no specific reference in the governing documents to installing spikes or anything on some sort of "shared" fence, accept that a genuine common element cannot be altered unilaterally.

Even if what you call a "shared" fence is not a common element, it may require mutual consent to alter. ( If so, did your cat-loving neighbour consent ?) If the fence instead is some sort of private entity erected by you lawfully and totally within your unit boundary, a very different matter.

Aside from the range of cat-deterring suggestions in postings above, consider that whatever your rights are, they likely do not include altering a common element with even a possible risk of injury to a resident, owner nor even pet.

Your rights may not include whatever visual effect, nor complicating fence maintenance nor even preventing someone's cat from landing on the fence without entering your yard.

It may be valid for some condo/HOA to rule out some of the spikes shown online eg metallic to deter hordes of pigeons from urban highrise balconies. maybe better than netting.

Check your jurisdiction's occupiers liability law if your choice of spikes could actually injure. It is unlikely you can punish - even injure - someone's property entering whether by sharp metal spikes nor impalers because just for starters it could also be a child injured while chasing a ball that rolled under the fence.

Persuade other victims to back you or try to get a court order if safe spikes are refused.

2 Nuisance cats :

However rare it is that cats have been expelled or ordered indoors by court order, in 2010 a condo corporation in my jurisdiction was persuaded (by complaining, evidence-rich, multiple owners) to obtain a court order for removal of four misbehaving outdoor cats.

The 4 cats were ordered out within 4 days, plus the condo corp was awarded a $20,000 portion of its legals & disbursemnets from the resident & unit owner. Not common.

The defendants had dared to defy a mediation offer, defended as S.R.L. self represented litigants /pro se against a professional litigator, and were cut to ribbons.