Neighbor's cat coming in through the cat door.. uh.

[ake987]

So, three times now, I have run to the basement toward the blood curdling screams and found our neighbor’s cat in our house facing off with our cat. Luckily, it is apparently weary of humans because I did not have to do much to scare it back out the door.

I have no idea if it is a male or female, spayed or neutered - I would hope. However, our cat is spayed, 4yo, we’ve been living in this house for two years, but this problem only started over the summer. “Oreo” as my boyfriend and I have started to call “him”, is now frequently lurking, trying to get in the house. Today “he” tried to get in a window I opened while cleaning the house.

I don’t even know who this cat belongs to, although he does have a collar, I’ve never gotten close enough to check. Our cat gave our neighbor stitches when she tried to pick her up last summer. One of the reasons I don’t approach strange animals. (Luckily she admitted the cat tried to get down and she kept holding her… well…:rolleyes:)

How do I get this cat to stop lurking and coming in our cat door, short of making our cat an indoor cat? Do I contact Animal Control, or would they tell me to get lost and just keep our cat inside? We’ve tried… if she can’t go outside, she will everything apart, use the entire house as her personal litterbox, and essentially goes completely feral - which seems counter intuitive, but there it is.

[Simkie]

Great timing–I was just looking at keyed cat doors. You have several options: http://www.petdoors.com/electronic-pet-doors.html Some have collar keys, one goes off a standard ID chip (no collar required!) There are reviews for the several I was curious about on amazon.

[LauraKY]

I’ve been looking at the micro chip lock doors…pricey, but I’m sick of feeding the entire neighborhood in my garage.

[Canaqua]

Keyed cat door sounds like a good plan, if your cat will keep a collar on. Ours won’t, he gets out of any collar in under a day and I don’t want to waste money on something expensive for him.

Do you have a dog? Our older dog does not like cats, though she has accepted ours as part of her family and allowed in the house. We had a strange cat come in through our cat door a couple of years ago…I let the dog down into the basement and she ran it off pronto, complete with snarling and loud barking, leaving our cat alone. The strange cat never came back in.

[chancellor2]

I have a keyed dog door to keep our indoor cats in. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend them. The keys don’t work that well, and break often.

[ake987]

Hm, I had no idea about these locking cat doors, and they sound good in theory, but I will offer anyone that can get within 100 feet of our cat with a collar in their hand, let alone get it on, and keep it on, a million bucks. I’ll even provide the falcon-handling gloves.

We do have a dog, 90lbs of Aruba rescue mutt, who absolutely adores the cat (but I don’t think anything would make the cat happier than to see the dog get hit by a car), but because the cat is such a… well… bitch, and has always been very independent, when we got the dog (year and a half ago) she took the basement as “her” territory, so we do not allow the dog down there. And he knows, he will not go down there even if the door is wide open and the cat is taunting him, rolling around at the bottom of the stairs. We did this because A) we were afraid of what the 11lbs of feline fury would do to the dog if he attempted to maul her with kisses, and B) we really did want her to have a “safe place”, even though we’re more afraid of what she’d do to the dog. :lol: She rarely comes upstairs (even before we got the dog), but she does occasionally come to the top stair and rubs on the dog’s nose several times before hissing and batting him away (has never used her claws on him, interestingly).

This might sound awful, and I feel bad for even admitting to it, but I have let the dog out when I see “Oreo” in the yard, and he chases him off the property, but does not chase him past our property line, and comes back to me immediately when called, even in the middle of a “pursuit”. He would not hurt the cat (unless kisses hurt), and anyway, he never catches up with the cat, but I figure that at least makes our property less desirable.

The microchip door would be a possibility, but not currently due to funds, and definitely not if they are prone to breaking - I just can’t throw that kind of money away - that could pay for five lessons or a clinic!

Thanks for all the suggestions so far!

ETA: If the cat were just coming in and eating, this wouldn’t be such a big deal to me, even though I wouldn’t like feeding someone else’s cat for several reasons - i.e.: my money, other cat health problems, etc. BUT, the cats are fighting, to the point where there has been blood and fur flying. Our cat used to sleep in one of two kitty condos we have for her in the basement, but now she perches on top of the freezing cold fridge (that sits right next to the cat door), staring down at the cat door, as if that is the best/safest vantage point for her. I almost feel bad for this evil creature.

[Simkie]

It sounds like it’s the collar keys breaking for chancellor, not the door. If you went with the door that keys of the microchip, there’d be no collar key to break.

Another option is to trap the cat and either call his people and discuss how to keep him out of your house, or place him with a (hopefully no kill) shelter a couple counties away. Perhaps option one first, followed up by option two, if his people are unwilling to make changes.

[mvp]

Did you try defining the word Todesstreife for this cat? It was the “deathzone” surrounding the Berlin Wall. Anyone caught there (save pregnant women and the mentally ill) would be shot. That would be Easterners, Westerners, those trying to save those already injured-- anyone.

A cat can understand the concept, but he/she must live it. You need to make your basement a place of guaranteed terror.

Unfortunately, cats know when we are around to inflict terror and when we are not. The only solution is a bad one. You must trap kitteh and systematically harass him a bit while in the Todensstreife.

He needs to think that your basement is guaranteed terror AND that he cannot predict when he won’t be able to turn that terror on and off for himself while he is there.

[candyappy]

When we built a house for my mom on our property she had 2 cats. She would leave the door open so her cats could come and go. Our cat started coming in, eating, using her litter box and making himself at home and fighting with her one cat. If she tried to remove him ( 18 pounds) He would stand up and box her. She was afraid of him and took to spraying him with a squirt bottle. It did work. As long as the door is open to him and there is no one( dog or human) to scare him, you have a problem. Isn’t there scent sprays you can use they find offensive? Of course then your cat may not come in either… My boys would use a gun.

[Bluey]

Could you fix an outdoor pen for your cat, so your cat can go out, nothing else can come thru the dog door?

[JanM]

Since you have no idea who is the owner of this animal then I would trap him in a humane trap, and transport to a shelter very far away. No way on this earth would I put up with something harassing my animal, on my property, and with a bad attitude to boot. And instead of a humane trap maybe a big fishing net-we used to have one that was really big around, and with something to put under it might make transfer to a carrier possible without risking scratches to the humans involved.

Plus because you don’t know who owns the animal I would avoid contact at all costs, because I have heard people (no one I could do anything about) brag that because tags weren’t required, that their cats never went to the vet or cost them anything, which means no rabies shot in my book.

[BLBGP]

For what it’s worth, our electronic pet door works really really well. Can you keep your cat inside? If neighbor cat is coming in so easily then you’re lucky it’s not worse like a raccoon or opossum.

[danceronice]

[QUOTE=BLBGP;6020677]
For what it’s worth, our electronic pet door works really really well. Can you keep your cat inside? If neighbor cat is coming in so easily then you’re lucky it’s not worse like a raccoon or opossum.[/QUOTE]

No kidding. I’d be worried enough about rabies from a strange cat (as soon as PC became handle-able, he went in for a snip and shots.) But raccoons and other pests have been known to figure out how to get in through cat doors.

[jetsmom]

Look what came thru this cat door! It’s really cute!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/14/baby-seal-house-couch_n_1146980.html?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk3|120042

[JanM]

A friend had a cat that only went out in his well fenced yard (6 foot rock wall) so he had a cat door from the kitchen to the laundry room and another through the back door. He kept the dry food in the laundry room, but the cat would bounce it out of the dish, under the washer and dryer, and it attracted roaches if the owner didn’t clean it up quickly. One day he hears the cat playing with the food, opens the door and starts to yell at the cat to stop it, but looks and realized that yelling was a bad idea. Yes, it was a skunk. The owner gently closed the door, put the closer on his side of the kitchen door, and waited until the skunk left. After that he closed the outside cat door, and the cat could only go out when the owner was right there.

[Peggy]

A friend ended up with a raccoon on her dining table, happily munching on leftover Halloween candy, late one Halloween night. The next night she locked the cat door, but was awakened by a banging on the cat door. The raccoon was back, along with several friends, and was very annoyed that he (she?) was locked out.