You might remember I posted on here sometime back about my new neighbours' cat who took a liking to us and decided to move in. Anyway because the neighbours were often away, I finally had a chat to them about taking kitty off their hands. They were very agreeable and thankful because they knew they weren't spending much time with him. Wife had just had twins and spent all of the Summer in her home town in Croatia.
To cut a long story short, kitty has been an absolute blessing and we love him... but he has discovered 'across the road' and is running over there all the time now. I just witnessed him running across at 18h30 - peak traffic time! The other day he went across at 18h00 and I followed him and stood by the hole in the fence for well into an hour to catch him when he comes out. Thankfully I was able to grab him and carry him back (traffic was horrendous!!) but obviously I will not always be there to do that.
We have tried locking him in until midnight - we know we cannot stop him from going out but if we can limit those hours to between midnight and 06h00 then that would be ok.
He has on occasion gotten very stressed at being locked in, like tonight, hence why I let him out (BIG MISTAKE!). What other tricks do people use to keep cats near the house??