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?

She owes you an apology for banging on the door at 2.30.

This. I would have let your husband get it as you’ve all been disturbed and he wanted to get it. But I would say this should not happen again and she should keep her cat in at night.

Me too

It wasn't a need.

An actual emergency is very different.

Oh fuck off. It was half past two in the bloody morning!

The rude neighbour should’ve been kind by considering the fact OP would have been asleep at that time

'Be kind' is used pretty much exclusively when someone is being a knob, as this thread shows.

Or children who could have been woken up, or even if not have to get to school....

Life and death, major emergency, fine wake me up. A cat roaming as they generally do, leave me be.

If you read the thread you'll see that none of those reasons apply.

Yes!

Are you the neighbour?

An errant cat is possibly the only good reason to wake someup up at 2:30 am with impunity.

I'd have nipped down, got a sneaky cat-cuddle in and handed it over the fence, having banked some brownie points for when I need builders/ocado to park over her drive, noisy party, house extension permission

YABU

I would have been far less polite about being woken up at 2.30am by the stupid cow.

Oh come on
no need to be so aggressive

It’s not kind to the cat lady to encourage her to think her behaviour is ok though, is it?

As someone who lives with ongoing trauma I know full well the struggle of learning to manage your own feelings and behaviours, rather than act them out.

Cat lady needs to learn to talk back to her anxious thoughts, rather than co-opt other people into them. The cat was behaving normally for a cat.

’Be Kind’ people who get sucked into normalizing and enabling anxious, trauma induced or unhelpful thoughts and behaviours actually cause harm. They continue the cycle of destructive behaviour for those who have them.

You need people who point out how you behaving and how it’s not ok.

The people who have helped me with this, have not always been kind.

The people who have ‘been kind’ for fear of upsetting my feelings have kept me trapped in behaviours that have very negatively affected my life.

’Be kind’ is a pernicious movement which is entirely centred on how the ‘Be kind’ person wants to see themselves. It’s not about the person who needs help at all.

Wait so she rang your doorbell at 2:30 and 5:15 to say the cat is in your garden and the cat wasn’t even in your garden? Yes she’s massively unreasonable!!

You did the right thing OP.

But ‘shinning’ and ‘fumming’ ?? It is actually very difficult to type those words with autocorrect.

I’d be fucked off too.

I would be furious

You think a cat being a cat not ill, escaped, trapped or injured is the only good reason to wake someone at 2.30am!

It's hardly on par with a flood, fire or dead relative which are actually about the only reasonable reasons to wake someone at that hour.

OP I have 2 cats who I adore and I don't think YABU at all. It's really unsettling for your doorbell to be rung in the middle of the night. My heart would've jumped to my chest thinking it was the police to tell me my whole family had died or something. If it was an indoor cat who wasn't streetwise/had health conditions I might sympathise but for a regular cat? Ridiculous. You're completely right to tell her how ridiculous she's being and tell her never to do this again. Cats have no sense at all of garden boundaries. They'll go where they feel. If she doesn't like this she needs to catproof her fencing or keep it indoors. Not your problem at 2am FFS

I'd be really annoyed too.

Does she have reason to be so panicky? Has the cat usually an indoor cat? Unwell? Injured?

If not I'd be telling her to keep her cat indoors so she knows where they are and she best not bother you with it again.

Cats win

Your neighbour is batshit.
I’ve had cats pretty much all my life and would never behave like that - we’ve had missing cat (who unfortunately got run over and was taken to the local blue cross) but we didn’t ring neighbour’s bells in the middle of the night.
If she’s that concerned she should keep the cat in at night like we do for our current one.

I can't believe she came back at 5am. I'm glad you told her off.. imagine her waking DC twice in one night I'd be fuming! For a CAT! That clearly goes outdoors!

I wonder what your next doors think? They must have had it from her at some point too.