Is my cat feeling threatened?

[ladygagoo]

Hi

Need some help from all you lovely cat experts please. My 18month old female tortoiseshell cat is really fab and has always done her business outside (she has a cat flap that reads her micro chip) but we do lock her inside at night. (she has a closed room litter tray as well if she wants to use)
There are so many other cats in our neighbourhood and she is quite petite compared to some of the other local bruisers.

She has recently started poo-ing on the lawn (both front and back gardens) and spraying the bushes in the back garden. We think its because a lot of other cats have started to come into our garden and she's feeling a bit under pressure. One incident last weekend - we saw this other cat about to s*t on our lawn literally about 5 feet away from our cat (is this like someone else s*ting in your face in cat terms??) we chased the other cat away before it could perform but our cat is definitely not quite herself these days.

The other thing that might have a bearing on her behaviour is that I am 32 weeks pregnant and there is a lot of baby stuff in the house - she does definitely think she is my baby (and DP's) but we cuddle and pick her up just as much now as before I was Pg.

So my question is - do you think the other cats are bothering her hence the recent spraying and poo-ing ? Can you think of anything we can do about it?

TIA

It's definately the neighbourhood cats. I adopted a small female cat (nicknamed Princess Tiny Cat) and she couldn't fight off the bigger cats that came into the garden. She'd previously done her business in the garden but now she's back to using the inside litter tray because of the other cats.

You're lucky she can use the cat flap because mine could never work it out so one of the fat neighbouthood toms moved in to our house! He turned out to be a charmer but we never planned on having two cats. He does however guard the garden territory.

There isn't much you can do beyond chasing off the cats you do see, or keeping your own cat inside which wasn't something I'd be prepared to do. Your cat will have to find her own place in the pecking order.