Help! Cat scared to come home

[manateeandcake]

Apologies in advance for the length -- this is a bit of a complicated situation, but I'm at my wits' end and would really appreciate any ideas or experience you may have.

I've had my neutered male ginger cat for 7 years and he's always been an outdoor cat and a wanderer. Our house backs onto a very overgrown park, which he adores. He has a hole in the wall between our small, paved back yard and the park, and a cat flap in the back door. His pattern until recently has been to spend a lot of time indoors in the colder months and most of his time outdoors from around May - October, popping in when it's raining or to eat.

We've had an ongoing problem with one or two neighbouring toms (not sure who owns them, if anyone) coming into our back yard. One of them, who we nicknamed The Bastard, learned that he could open our supposedly locked cat flap (one of those magnet ones) by head butting it. He would come in every night and eat any cat food we left out. We didn't want to not leave food as our cat's visits were quite unpredictable. However, we recently stopped leaving the food and fed our cat when we saw him. We also just got a Sureflap microchip cat flap which I'm hoping will be Bastard-proof. The thing is, the Bastard actually seems to have gone, but I think he must have scared our cat so much and/or marked our yard as his territory, so now for the past couple of weeks our cat has completely stopped coming home. If I go and call him in the park, I usually find him and he lets me bring him home and is obviously hungry, so he has not moved in somewhere else. However we are going away next week and I can't ask the cat sitter to search the (large) park every day -- also the cat probably wouldn't come for him as he's a stranger.

I've been taking the cat into the yard, feeding him there and trying to show him it's safe, but he hisses, seems very nervous and escapes as fast as he can. I really feel that he has "forgotten" how to come home, or given up trying out of fear. My question is: is there anything I can do to make him feel like it's his territory again?

I think you need to catch the cat and keep him in for two or three weeks until he gets used to being at home again, and then gradually start letting him out.
In terms of the holiday, I'd keep him in until then, and take him to a cattery where he will be safe whilst you are away, then when he comes home again keep him in for a couple of weeks, until he is settled in the house again. It should be enough to break the cycle, although I am sure the cat will complain.

Get him home and keep him in for a while until he gradually is able to make your house and yard his own territory again.

Yes trap him and bring him in and keep him there to re-establise his territory.

Obviously he'll need a litter tray if he doesn't have one now - if he was at one point litter trained he'll recall how. There can be a stand off but he'll use it eventually!!

Yes you need to bring him in and keep him in for two to three weeks. As long as the cat sitter doesn't accidentally let him out that should be fine when you go away too.

Thanks for the advice, all. He's in now, with a litter tray of course. I'm really torn about what to do while we're away, as he is sociable as well as being a wanderer and I think he would absolutely hate being shut in with only limited contact with the cat sitter. I have basically scrubbed the back yard with vinegar, water and baking soda so I'm hoping that will get rid of the other cat's smell.