We have 9 year old neutered female cat. She tends to be slightly nervous at times, but nothing major. Ever since she’s been old enough to go out, she’s happily used her cat flap, which takes her out of the back door, into the back garden. However just before New Year, we had a skip delivered, it was placed onto our drive, which runs quite close to the back garden (there is a wooden fence between the drive and garden, so you can’t see the skip from the garden, but if you’d been in the garden when it arrived you would have heard all the noise). The skip has now been removed, so everything is back to normal, but it all seemed to scare our poor cat, and she no longer wants to use her cat flap or venture into the back garden. She’s happy to go out the front door, and then waits on the doorstep to be let back in again. She won’t venture round the back of the house. Obviously if we’re home we are happy to let her in/out the front door, but DH and I both work full time, and of course we’re not up in the night either for door-opening duties!
Will she regain her confidence over time, and is there anything we can do to help things along?