Sex and the City star Jason Lewis has apologised after he was accused of shooting grains of rice at feral cats to stop them defecating on his front yard.

A number of cats were abandoned following the death of a California neighbour last September, and Jason had become fed up with the felines leaving their waste all over his property. He was recently spotted aiming a gun in the animals' vicinity to shoo them away.

However, the 49-year-old's actions have caused him to clash with a local woman, who has been feeding the cats in an effort to gain their trust as she attempts to find new homes for them.

Lewis insists he has only been using grains of rice to fire in the direction of the cats, and not at them, to make sure they stay off his land, because their excrement is creating a bigger health and safety problem in the area.

"Everyone who knows me knows my love of animals," he told TMZ in a statement. "I've tried for months to work with a person who is coming into the neighborhood and feeding a large group of feral cats in an effort to relocate them as they have been filling the yards with fleas and waste."

However, he expressed his remorse for using the weapon at all, adding: "I made the wrong choice in shooting rice into the dirt (not toward the cats) to spook with the noise and scare them away. To fellow animal lovers that I disappointed, I'm sorry."

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