I also think it's a shame that it escalated so quickly,
You can't really call it escalating quickly if something had already happened before. You told about the blocking of parking, and when the general contractor says that their reaction was “completely exaggerated,” then there was definitely something where, although you weren’t there, you probably didn’t excuse it either – at least not enough to erase their negative experience, but rather that they react more suspiciously toward you now.
I can also imagine that they don’t want to be annoyed by “the new ones” a second time, and enduring noise and construction dust might contribute to them now watching closely, and with a negative attitude. The situation doesn’t get any easier if they themselves don’t have pets or don’t like cats. Or if they don’t have a vent for their problems like you find here in the forum.
But if the poop does not come from your cats, then you could take all the wind out of your dear neighbor’s sails.
But that probably won’t help much. You’d have to really earn some positives to compensate for or neutralize the few negatives. It could even backfire badly with such tests if they’re seen as disproportionate.
So basically just keep throwing everything they collect and put in front of our door into the trash and leave it at that?
I would also just dispose of it as suggests. If the neighbor can’t do it, then you will. Because after all, you can’t rule out that they poop somewhere on the neighbor’s property, in whatever garden patch, with whichever neighbor – so somewhere as free-ranging cats. And so you are making your own balance somewhere, no matter what exactly it’s about.
Tolerance is always a tricky thing. I try to put myself in the other person’s shoes. You let friends get away with a lot, but not “enemies.” You also tend to sometimes push the bad guy on the other side. What if you didn’t have cats, but the neighbors’ cats made a mess at your place? Then it would look like you’d open a post here because you were afraid your children might come into contact with the poop while playing?!
... like – I used the search and found this:
https://www.hausbau-forum.de/threads/katzenkot-oder-wildtierlosung-achtung-haeufchenbild.28152/
A 43-page-long thread where a lot is said and the other side is also seen.
And I can spoil it: it will eventually be resolved which animal was the cause.
To be honest, I wouldn’t want to clean up other animals’ poop or find (cat) poop in my garden either. But I do.
I also regularly tidy up annoying packaging from sweets and ice cream in the front yard. Only our neighbors come into question there... but unlike your neighbors, I find it silly to make a big deal out of it that wastes my energy, so I just throw it away and focus on other things.
If suddenly dog poop appeared in front of our house, I would also clean it up, even though I know that our dog doesn’t poop within 200 meters and twenty other dogs could be responsible. I wouldn’t argue about it either.
If in doubt, I am the one responsible for my animal – I try everything so that my animal doesn’t disturb my surroundings. If you try to teach an energetic young dog, who is the guardian of his property and owner, to stop barking and it sometimes doesn’t work, I handle it openly with the neighbors: admitting weakness earns sympathy, neighbors like my dog and no longer get annoyed by the short barking, which is just the dogs’ way of speaking and should not be suppressed 100%.
But yes, everyone has a different frustration tolerance. You have to weigh for yourself what is bad or worse. What do you address, what do you make the center of your daily life?
That means: Even if it were my cat doing it, he would have to put it in his trash can, not in my garage.
He would have to... yes. And what if not? You can’t change others, only your own perspective. There’s always some truth to that old saying.
It only stops being okay for me when the neighbors start bringing everything that falls on their property over to us, no matter who caused it.
Then I would really rise above it.