Gardening is supposed to be relaxing, but not when a negligent neighbor’s cat droppings began to contaminate her vegetables and sicken her young daughter.

Armed with wit and a shovel, one mother delivered a message no neighbor could ignore.

You’ll want to read on for this harrowing and slightly gross story!

Returning your property.

When I was a toddler, I got Toxoplasma from the neighbors cat pooping in my mother’s garden.

Who would have thought root vegetables and cat poo don’t mix?

The toddler’s mother tried to reason with the neighbor at first, but she didn’t respond well to reason.

So my mother asked the neighbor to please keep an eye on her cat when she let it outside, because it had made me sick.

My mother didn’t want the cat coming onto our property and pooping in the carrots.

Well the neighbors response was “you should be thanking me for the free fertilizer”.

Like, 1) No one wants your infected cat poo in the vegetables they intended to eat and 2) Cat poop actually degrades soil quality so is terrible fertilizer.

So the mother tried a more… direct approach.

So seeing as my mother saw she would get nowhere being reasonable, she got digging, unearthing 5 gallons of cat poop.

She then took that bucket and dumped it outside of the neighbor’s main door and left a note: “Thought you would want your fertilizer back”.

The neighbor freaked out and called the police.

So the neighbor, I guess, in response to finding 5 gallons of cat poop, just dumped on their entrance called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), but my mother isn’t one to be intimidated.

When the police questioned the mom, she had a perfectly reasonable explanation.

So when talking with the cops, my mother pulled this gem from her hat:

“Oh, I just knew whose property it was, and since I knew who all that fertilizer belonged to I just couldn’t justify keeping it, that would be stealing.

So the responsible and civic thing to do was to return her property. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she gets back any more that I find.”

My mother had just told her neighbor and the cops she had no intention of stopping her course of action and would continue unhindered in her mission to return any “fertilizer” she found in her garden.

The cops ended up buying her story and the neighbor was SOL.

The RCMP, in the wisdom, told neighbor this was a civil matter and they would not get involved any further.

The delight my mother still gets when she said the neighbor put up a for sale sign and moved across town she takes that as a personal victory to this day.

Justice wasn’t so much as served – more like dumped.

What did Reddit think?

Refusing to clean up after your pet says a lot about a person.

This user can’t believe so many owners are so intent on letting their cat roam freely.

This redditor has a clever way of warding off unwanted intrusions from neighborhood cats.

It seems the neighbor received message loud and clear.

The cat droppings may have been toxic, but nothing is near as potent as an angry mother’s determination.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.