My cat is being bullied!

[Grumpla]

We recently moved to a new house and there is a cat two doors down that is literally twice the size of my little scrap.

I haven't yet got round to installing a cat flap but have been letting her in and out a couple of times a day (she rarely goes out when it is cold anyway, but in the summer is usually out for about seven hours a day!)

My husband forgot to let her in the day before yesterday and when I rescued her six hours later she had clearly been in a fight - she was all puffed up and the very edge of her ear was bleeding slightly.

Given her extreme phobia of boxes and vets I decided to clean it up myself and see how she got on. She is fine, it is healing nicely, but today RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME she went and sprayed on the kitchen door.

We went through a terrible episode of stress incontinence (her, not me!) several years ago so I have gone straight back into Boot Camp regime (she is confined to barracks unless I specifically take her out of the room and allow her into my space blah blah blah) I'm confident that a few weeks of this and she will be reassured that I am Alpha Cat again and she doesn't have to spray. But what am I going to do long term? This cat is so massive, I am not confident that a tag-magnet catflap would keep him out.

Should I inform DH that litter tray is here to stay? Or raise issue with neighbour (I suspect from his behaviour that tom is not spayed)

Or do you think that eventually they will reach some sort of truce? My girl is tiny but very (ahem) scrappy, I have seen her start fights with other cats before so I don't think the blame is solely with him.

Has anyone else had any experience with this sort of thing? How long do you think it normally takes for cats to sort out territory etc (or is this too optimistic?)

No real point speaking to the other cat's owner as he can't control where his cat goes. I feel for you as there are a lot of cats here and my cat has been chased home more than once. Yesterday there was a new black kitten in my garden. I shooed it out. My cat is old and ill and she doesn't need another cat stressing her.

My cats a Bengal and he took an instant dislike to next doors female cat but one day he attacked her through her cat flap and she dashed out and gave him a proper dusting.

Some cats he's friends with and they can come in our garden and others he hangs around with but if they come in the garden the fur flies. They'll sort it out in the end and establish new terrotory boundries because the other cat might think your gardens his.

Not much point talking to the owner, cats have a legal right to roam unlike most domestic animals.

Our neighbours let their cat out at night so when I noticed that I kept ours in at night so their cat had a bit of Bengal free time.

Spraying on the front door is not her being dominate over you, it is her way of telling the other cat this is her home. Personnaly I would get a microchip cat flap installed asap and microchip your cat so that only she can get in the house. So then she can get to a place of security. The microchip ones are considerably stronger and don't rely on your cat keeping a collar on so no risk of her getting shut out. The evil cat next was severly bruised as he tried to follow my two into through this flap on day one and actually has gone of to find other people to bully.

It's not the door to outside, it's the door between kitchen and utility room. However I don't think she does this to assert her dominance over me, she does it when she feels stressed & then worries that her "territory" has been compromised.

I think the problem is partly because in our old (small) flat she was only allowed free reign in the kitchen and outside. She was only allowed in the living room when one of us was present (we both worked from home so this was actually most of the day) and never in the bedrooms. So it was very clear to her that I was in control of that "territory". If she did any spraying etc it was outside. Now she has been given free run of a much larger house but not able to go in and out without my assistance so her territory is bigger and indoors, and she feels she needs to patrol her borders...

It sounds a bit odd reading this back but she was a very, very nervous rescue cat when I got her, the stress incontinence period we went through was hell, and since adopting the above tactics she has been much friendlier and calmer (and up until now, fully housetrained)

Today she has been allowed into the kitchen with me (but not out into the rest of the house, and not on her own) She is now asleep in her bed in the utility room. No further incidents today, thank goodness... My DH was very, very angry when it all happened last time and I am not sure we could get through months of constant carpet shampooing etc again... at one point about half our carpet was covered in tinfoil and tarpaulins and we had two or three litter trays in every room...

Only reason I would talk to neighbour would be to gently enquire whether tom is intact, but another neighbour has told me today that she thinks he has already been spayed. If that's the case then there's probably not much more I can do other than sort things out in the house and at some point hope she and he come to some sort of arrangement!

What kind of catflap did you use Lizcat? It would have to go through a UVPC door panel so if you could give me the dimensions of yours that would be really helpful.

Microchip cat flap definitely. We've got this one:-

www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=cat+flap&x=0&y=0

Our only option was to put it in a glass door which ended up costing an arm and a leg!

Our cat gets bullied by a big old black bruiser down the road. He can at least make a dash for the cat flap and know he's safe when he gets inside.