Neighbour just rung doorbell at 2.30am!

[greywolfie]

I'm now wide awake and fumming. She rung twice so I opened the front bedroom window as I worried it might be an emergency. Women stood there on her phone in tears and I thought - oh, she could need help.
My husband is on his way down to.open the door.
Then she says...."my cat is in your garden"
I mean - FFS!
I said "well your cat will get out of our garden"
"Really?"
"Yes. If your cat is still in our garden in the morning we will bring it back"
Shut window.
Husband then opened the door and she started telling him about the damn cat- I yelled at him to shut it.
He wanted to go out and get it but I said that was mad and would encourage the over protective cat mother to do it again in future.
For reference, we have 2 elderly cats that very rarely scale the fence. One night one got over very late and was struggling to make it back (we have stuff by our fence that would've also helped her bloody cat up, if he cared - but their side is just the bare fence). I was a bit worried but would NEVER have rung their bell in the middle of the night! About an hour later our old lady regained her energy and made it back.
AIBU to go round in the morning and point out you don't ring people's doorbells for this reason? It's batshit right?

I would have normally said yes very unreasonable, but my cat is a house cat (Not streetwise at all and an expensive breed so at risk of being stolen). If he somehow got out and couldn’t get back over fence, my kids would be beside themselves as he is a much loved member of the family - I couldn’t leave him stranded and also the nights are very cold so would have to ring neighbours doorbell too - sorry.

Blimey, the words used to describe the neighbour on here, e.g Nutter, Looney Tunes, about somebody none of you know, is so horrible.

OP, do you know your neighbour at all? I ask because, while I'm not meet-up, hang-out friendly with either of my next door neighbours, I do know both well enough to be concerned if either of them was to get me up at 2.30am about their cat. It would be out of character and I'd immediately assume there was more to it: a moment of disorientation, panic attack or suchlike. As such, I would help them get their cat, see them safely home and ask if they were OK being left. I'd then pop round the next day to see if I could figure about what had gone on. If it turned out it was simply, I wanted to get my cat in, I'd say ok, that's obviously important to you but so is my sleep so please don't wake me up in the night again about this.

There's just no reason not to care about people and go with kindness first, find out more later. Obviously if this neighbour has form for waking up the neighbours for seemingly daft reasons, that's not ok but then in that case i'd be concerned that there was something more serious going.

As an owner of 3 indoor cats, i would have scaled the fence to get my fluffy baby back!

I love cats, OP, but I'm with everyone else who would be livid about this.

I'd tell the neighbour if she ever does this again I will not be opening the door, and I will only be opening the window in order to aim the supersoaker at her.

Er no, not at 2.30am.

So easy to spew #BeKind when it's someone else being woken repeatedly in the early hours though!

But that's a different situation, isn't it. This cat was an outdoor cat, being an outdoor cat.

My neighbours (but one) have knocked on in the middle of the night because their dog escaped their garden, crossed our shared neighbours garden and was in ours and trying to get out our side gate, panicking. If she'd managed she'd have been on the road and could have been hit by a car. Obviously we went and retrieved her.

The same neighbours have a cat who is regularly in our garden overnight and they've never once asked us to bring him back, because it's normal behaviour for an outdoor cat to be outside...

Unless the cat was a lion?!

Seriously though, is she maybe living with anxiety or a mental health condition that made the cat issue more important than it would seem to most people?

I think it's fine to approach her kindly about it today to say "is everything OK? You rang our doorbell at half two in the morning when we were fast asleep. I thought it was an emergency. Are you OK?"

They were talking through the window - shouting at him to close the window is the same thing. She wanted to stop them talking.

That’s the husband’s prerogative on whether he wants to help or not. If my husband started shouting at me to do something I wanted to do, especially helping a neighbour, I would ignore him and view him as controlling. He can discuss it with me properly the next day, not shout orders at me.

Oh FFS, at 2am?

Neighbour was in tears - I would always help a woman in distress. WTF is wrong with people.

Same reason and incident though. Not repeated behaviour in a meaningful sense.

5am is not the middle of the night. Their daughter was going to work, hence why the neighbour asked again.

I wouldn’t have opened the door at that time. Absolutely bonkers of her to come round to you at that time for a cat.

‘Be kind’ doesn’t mean ‘be kind no matter what’, which is confused (deliberately) WAY too much in MN, by seemingly miserable people who seemingly hate everyone.

Is your neighbour okay? This is the kind of thing a bipolar family member would do in a manic episode.

Oh get a grip. I and most people would shit ourselves at the door going unexpectedly at 2.30 am. Would I fuck be kind to the stupid bint. She’d be lucky I never told her to fuck off.

100% right not to encourage that behaviour.

I can’t believe people are telling you to be kind, OP 🤣 Honestly, this obsession with kindness and the pandering to every demand put upon people is ridiculous. “Kindness” is used as a rod to beat people with these days and I think we actually need less kindness towards ridiculous people and their demands, and more tough love.

That wasn't very kind!

😁 Sorry I had to laugh. Typical asshole cat behaviour.

Op I would have handled the situation just as you did. Yanbu

The OP was told she could have been kind in the very first post. The cat was not injured or in danger, it was just being a cat. Indulging a neighbour who has woken you up at 2.30am because they are anxious about their perfectly fine cat is not kindness it's insanity. The message does seem to be "be kind no matter what" and posters who disagree are neither confused or filled with hate. In this situation the expectation for OP to assume any responsibility for the neighbours anxiety is unreasonable.

This site is now called Catsnet. 😺😺😺

I agree with you .
Personally I’d have a look for the cat AND explain this is what cats do . Who knows what’s going on with this young woman ? Being this upset about a cat doing normal cat wandering could be an indicator that she’s not mentally well / at the end of her tether due to other life circumstances .
We all approach this short life of ours differently & I try to treat other people with compassion rather than getting angry with them as a default.