Was neighbour BU?

I put the "you did nothing wrong" type reponses in with those that there will always be one who goes ''the neighbour 2 streets over won the lottery and won't give you half they being totally unreasonable you are a wonderful person sit on their doorstep till they do what you want"

@ BournardTourney
“You did nothing wrong Op, yes they should have opened the door.”

Excuse me? Since when did it become an obligation to open the door? There are many and varied reasons why people might choose to have pulled down the shutters - that you wanted me to open my door is no reason for me to have to do so.

You have absolutely no idea what you were interrupting.

You let your cat wander. Knocking on neighbors doors is ridiculous. If your cat gets hurt or trapped somewhere it is no one’s responsibility but your own.

Cat proof your garden if you want your cat to go outside.

I can’t answer your question because I live on another continent and people here are particularly nutty - including me.
I had a cat once I was enormously fond of. We had my cousin staying over and this fancy hoover guy was there giving us a demonstration - when he left my cat disappeared and I was convinced that the hoover salesman had stolen my 33lb beloved cat!
My husband & my cousin berated me but I was frantic - my cat had never run off before.
I called & called & called and spent a sleepless night and no cat - and nothing the next day.
At 6pm the following evening he showed up on my front doorstep coated in what I can I only describe as a mixture of dust and water from a spray bottle.
He’d obviously had a very big adventure.
I still blame that hoover guy/ lol

You sound very entitled OP. YNBU to knock on their door but YABVU to suggest they’re unkind for not being able to come to the door and that you’re somehow a better person because “you’d answer even if it was for a cup of a sugar”. If you hadn’t knocked at a bad time I’m sure they’d give you a cup of sugar too.

It’s fine for you to knock but you’re not entitled to their time and it’s absolutely fine for them to answer or not - it’s their home. You have no idea if they looked outside to see who was knocking or not and you have no idea why they didn’t answer - as others have said they could have been having sex, just come out of the shower, had headphones in and not heard, mid-way through cooking or eating dinner, on a video call, working, just received some bad news or going through a bereavement, had fallen asleep on the sofa, had food poisoning or otherwise unwell… just accept that the time you knocked wasn’t a good time for them and that has absolutely nothing to do with “kindness”.

The world doesn’t revolve around you and people are allowed to have other things going on and not be available to you 24/7 without that making them unkind or unneighbourly. What is unkind is assuming the worst of people and making negative judgements based on something as meaningless as being unable to come to the door one time when you knocked instead of doing the normal thing and thinking “must be a bad time, hope I didn’t disturb them” and moving on with your life.

Oh OP. Wait till you have to get up at 2am to see to the baby and 5.30am to get the kids ready and get off to work. 8.30pm is a No Kid’s Yet’s 11pm.
And yes, YABTU to imagine that your poor neighbours are sitting round their house before bed eagerly awaiting to be asked to go promptly into their garden and look for a cat that’s been away exploring for 30 minutes. A cat which shouldn’t be there anyway, and will probably be a nuisance for their garden, which seems to completely have bypassed your awareness.

You sound like a very kindhearted cat owner.

Could you see them?
I usually leave my living room/hall lights on when I go out so it looks like I'm home to burglars.
I really don't think people have an obligation to answer the door, though.

How awful. As if amphibians aren’t threatened enough as it is.

You’re a new cat mum 🐾 and it’s still very early days for your kitten to be venturing out into new territory and so you naturally feel anxious ❤️ plus you live near a busy road ..
You’ll get used to his ‘roamings’ and he clearly is very loved , so he’ll be fine and come back home when he’s had a good mooch.
Pity more kitty owners aren’t as caring and loving as you xx 🐈‍⬛

If your cat hasn’t been home for 24 hours, it’s absolutely fine to ask neighbours to check. But it’s totally ridiculous to let a cat out at 8pm and then be so panicked when it hasn’t returned within 30 minutes that you’re bothering your neighbours.

You simply aren’t equipped to have an indoor/outdoor cat if that is how you are going to behave. Cats don’t always come when called - if they’re enjoying being outside on a summer evening and don’t want to come in, they will deliberately ignore you. It’s simply part of cat ownership.

your fault for not putting the tracker on and now shifting the blame the neighbours who have no obligation to answer their door

what an idiotic post

Oh.nooo. Surely this goes against having cats for the first instance, I do not have any bird tables as this is just an easy kill zone for them. But we have very few rats and mice here. They don't kill frogs but bring them in.

He has a new tractive tracker but hates wearing it so DH took it off him last night and I didn't have time to chase him t9 put it back on before I went to work. So he didn't have it on today. I let him out at just after 8pm when it was still light

You couldn't be arsed to put the tracker on the cat, they couldn't be arsed to open the door! I'm sure you had your reasons just as I'm sure they had theirs! 🤷

I wouldn't over think it. Most of the time I'd answer the door at that time but there are various times I might not. I might be out in the back garden. Then I won't hear you. I might have a migraine and be in too much pain to move off the bed to deal with someone at the door. I did once hear the neighbour's kid knocking because his ball was in my backyard. I'd just jumped in the shower and wasn't going to get out, get dressed and answer the door for anyone. They had bad timing and I wasn't available.

I wouldn't want a neighbour to knock for their cat on the regular.

I feel like knocking earlier would be more inconvenient since they'd likely still be having dinner, but this is mumsnet so I'm sure there's a set interval of about 5 mins only where it would've been acceptable.

OP you have decided you were right and I really dont know what you are getting from this, you might be typing you relaise you should not expect your neigbours to have answered but I am not sure any of us beleive you understand

what do you want from this thread?

I don't think it's rude or too late to knock, but I'm young with no kids like your neighbours and we'd be about 50/50 on whether we answered the door at that time of night if not expecting someone. Based entirely on whether we could be arsed or were doing something mildly more interesting.
If someone was distressed or shouting "fire" or something of course we'd answer.
I would have helped you look for your cat though, I love cats. But wouldn't have known that when you knocked, would assume yet another neighbour is looking for yet another misplaced amazon package.

Don’t stress it OP. As has been said, there are so many different scenarios why they couldn’t answer the door. I’ve done it loads for reasons varying from being sick in bed, naked from a shower, etc. I don’t think it’s anything personal.

Because you sound very deliberately disingenuous even after being told that people don’t like to be bothered in the evening.

You’re still making it sound as though others, not you, are in the wrong. “I assume this” and “genuinely that” and “i wasn’t banging” in wide-eyed innocence even after specifically being told why people aren’t obliged to disturb themselves to assist you.

The cat strolled back in minutes later. Even if it was in your neighbours garden it’s a cat you have let to roam free. Your annoying people before you have even looked around

A catio is an enclosed patio for cats so they can go out and stay safe/not contribute to decimating bird populations.

You can also cat-proof your fencing to keep them just in your garden. There’s netting as well as rollers that prevent them from going over. The rollers seem like a really good option. I’d intended to have them installed when I moved abroad (too many predators here for cats to go out) but ended up taking on a cat with a fused joint that doesn’t climb fences and is easily contained.