My head is pickled thanks to a row with my neighbour (well more neighbour had a go at me and I said I thought he was wrong so he shouted some more until I walked away until he can talk like a civil adult).
I have 3 cats. On sunny days, like today, my cats like to lie in my garden. All morning and most of the afternoon they were on the patio slabs asleep in the sun. Now the sun has moved/mostly gone, one of the cats (who is a sun worshipper) has moved to lie on the wall as it's higher and still in a sunny spot.
My neighbour has 2 dogs. One is a Westie who on his own is fine, doesn't bat an eyelid at the cats. The other is a little yappy thing, no idea of breed. This dog barks at everything especially the cats. It is currently going nuts at the cat, who is on the wall asleep ignoring it, this (as always) has set the Westie off barking as well.
When the cats are low in the garden the dogs can't see them because after the neighbour moved in last year he used to put the dogs out in the garden while he got on with decorating. At that point the noise didn't bother him, but I had a newborn and it drove me mad. So after trying and suggesting various things, including keeping my cats in of a morning and only letting them out after the dogs had had several hours in the garden to which he said I could go fuck myself if I thought I was keeping his dogs in all afternoon (this was the second time I'd ever spoken to him so this is the level of co-operation I've got) we put up fence panels that they can't see though. We're not allowed high fences and the boundary fence is actually his so we built that fence inside our garden. The fence works for most of the day.
Neighbour now works in a school so is about more during the holidays. He stormed out tonight ranting and raving about how he's not listening to my cats tormenting his dogs all holidays. Won't accept at all that his dog (who barks at the postman, us in our garden, anyone walking past, cars driving by, birds flying, trees moving in the wind - i.e. it barks constantly!) is the problem.
Am I missing something? Should I somehow be enforcing a height restriction on my cats or should he actually try and do something with his dog to stop it barking so much?
Apparently he's going to speak to the council noise people. Surely they can't do anything as I/my cats are not making any noise?