We have 3 cats and a dog (a terrier), our dog loves his cats but if he finds any not belonging to him on his property he swiftly chases them off.
Our next door neighbours have a cat that will occasionally come into our house through our cat / small dog flap at night.When our dog realises there is an intruder he charges off and the offender is removed back through the flap.
However at 3am this morning we were woken up by a screeching, barking racket and found next door's cat stuck halfway between the bannister spindles with our dog tearing chunks of hair out of it's tail. The cat must have come upstairs been found by the dog and got trapped trying to escape.
I called the dog off but the cat was stuck firm and my DH had to remove a spindle to free it. Once rescued though, the cat wouldn't leave our house - we had expected it to run downstairs and out through the flap, but it stayed put. DH tried to gently encourage it through the flap but it spread it's legs out and scratched him.
DH put it outside the front door and it promptly came back in again. Not the sort of game any of us enjoy in the early hours of the morning.
Our only solution was to lock the cat flap, which we did, but this seems unfair on our cats and dog who are used to coming and going as they please. We can't use the sensor collars and flaps as two of our cats refuse to wear them and promptly remove and lose any accessories put on them.
I am concerned for the well being of next door's cat if it gets trapped again - this time it was lucky and just lost a few clumps of fur, next time it might not get away so lightly. Our dog was really meaning business this morning when we first got to him.
I don't understand why it came back in either, surely it had received a big enough fright to go home and stay away ?
Our neighbours won't keep their cat in at night despite knowing that it does sometimes come into ours and that our dog doesn't like it.
Is there anything we can do to dissuade it in future while not inconveniencing our own pets ? I don't want to end up receiving a large vet's bill should this cat need treatment after one of it's visits.
Btw our dog isn't usually savage - he co-sleeps with his own cats, has never bitten or been aggressive to anyone and is well trained (he obeyed me instantly when called off this morning) but he really hates this other cat invading our home.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what we can do ?