N K CHANCE'S letter about Malvern Hills becoming a dog toilet and S L Phelps' letter regarding cats prompts me to defend dog owners.

I think dog owners are to be congratulated. Most now seem to pick up their animal's deposits. The real villains are cat owners.

Cats pose a worse social problem than dogs ever did. When I started to get my garden in order for the summer, I picked up nearly half a carrier bag of cat faeces.

Since my greenhouse plants have been put into my garden, I have had to remove at least one pile of cat faeces every day. This is disgusting.

I am a victim of TV gardening programmes, all of which urge us to transform our clay gardens into a rich loam. None of these TV gardeners warns that "loam" is what cats love most of all.

I am not alone in having a cat problem. Every gardener I know is affected. And we all suffer in silence. No more.

If we now prosecute dog owners, because their dogs foul public places, why can't we prosecute cat owners, when their pets defecate in neighbouring gardens?

Why should gardeners continue to silently tolerate the disgusting habits of other people's cats in their own gardens?

And if dog faeces carry the risk of blindness, what do cat faeces carry?

N TAYLOR,

Worcester.