Unwanted cats coming in through the cat flap

[Tabitha005]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here, but saw there was a forum for cat talk, so thought I'd pose this question here as I'm tearing my hair out.

We have a cat flap operated by a magnet which was working perfectly well until one of the neighbourhood cats (also with a magnet) decided to start coming in and eating our cat's food.

So, we swapped the magnet flap for a microchip flap. We've now tried two different microchip flaps and neither of them will work. It's either because of something to do with our cat's chip, or because of the height of the flap from the ground - we've even tried building him a little step up to the flap as suggested by the manufacturers, but to no avail.

The cat that keeps coming in is too fast for me to catch - I keep a water bottle spray handy as I know this approach would discourage him from coming in, but he's just too quick to catch.

I can keep the flap locked overnight as our cat doesn't go out after around 7pm, and I work from home, so I'm usually around to chase the intruder away. However, he's still managing to get in.

I've started putting our cat's dry food away when I'm out - trying to lessen the lure for the intruder cat - but it's not fair to my cat to deny him the ability to browse at his biscuits when I'm out and about. I always know when the intruder cat has been in because my cat always leaves himself a few biscuits, and never clears his bowl completely.

I've tried hissing and appearing threatening at the intruder cat, but that hasn't worked. My cat is a neutered male who's a big softy and would never even dream of defending his own territory. I feel like an over-anxious mother worrying about him all the time as I can see he gets stressed when the intruder cat comes in.

Any other ideas would be very gratefully received! Thank you.

You could ask your vet to scan your cat's chip to make sure it hasn't moved or vanished? Did the microchip flaps you bought pick up the cat's chip ok when you were doing the initial setup on them the bit where you stuff the cat's head through until the flap picks up the chip number? I ask because my chip flap has always been great. Not much help, sorry!

I had a microchip cat flap installed a few years ago and my two cats operated it with no problems. Subsequently my Mum's cat joined us and couldn't get it to work but I couldn't identify if that was because she is pretty dim or if the chip had migrated. Solved the problem by having her microchipped again (she's still very dim though )

Incidentally, I borrowed a microchip scanner last week to scan a stray tomcat and did a check on where the two chips are - one appears to be almost at the top of her head(!), the other between her shoulderblades.

Hi all, and thanks for your responses.

My cat was scanned at the vets only a couple of months ago when he went for his yearly check up and all seemed fine.

We could get both microchip operated flaps to detect his chip, but then once the flaps were installed, both of them resolutely refused him entry. We spoke at length with Pet Safe and they were great, and sent us a replacement flap (hence we now have two microchip flaps sitting in a cupboard in the kitchen doing nothing)!

We've spent hours trying to work out why the microchip flaps won't work. My husband has sort of seen it as a personal mission, but no efforts have solved the issue.

Short of simply locking the magnet flap so no-one can get in (but my cat can get out) when I'm not home - which is usually only for a couple of hours at most during the course of a working day, I'm not sure what else to do.

Are you sure that the batteries in the cat flap are new and in full working order?

We caught our cat (microchipped cat flap) holding the door open for next door's cat!!!