What do you make of this scenario?
Our cat is a young neutered male. Our neighbours about 5 doors down also have a young neutered male. The two cats fight if they cross paths and we've had a few vets bills from infected wounds, so we are trying to keep them apart as much as possible.
The neighbours' cat roams quite far down the street past our house, and he goes out the front and into the gardens across the street too.
Our cat tends to sit on our compost heap a lot! He will go one or two gardens either way, sometimes further, but only out the back. He is usually close by as he appears very quickly when we call him in.
Neighbours' cat will come in our garden most days. If our cat is in, the neighbours' cat often sits on our patio and stares in the kitchen door. He sits calmly and quietly while our cat goes absolutely bonkers howling and trying to get at him. He will stay there for ages until we go out and chase him off.
If they cross paths outdoors, the neighbours' cat again just sits there calmly, while our cat loses the plot. Tail fluffed up, ears back, yowling as loud as he can, right up in this other cat's face! The other cat will fight back at some point and as far as we can tell usually comes off better.
What's going on?
Is our cat a terrible bully? He seems to be the one starting the fights! The other cat seems totally chilled so if ours would back off they could share (ha!) the territory.
Or, is their cat with the big territory the dominant one, and he's winding our cat up?
Or something else we haven't thought of?