At wits' end with neighbour's cats

[idrinkandiknowthings]

I have two cats. Neighbour has two cats. Mine very rarely venture out of the back garden and they certainly don't go into anyone else's house.

My next door neighbour is only young with two small children. She has two -extremely adorable cats - but they always seem to be outside and I can't open my back door without them darting in to find my cats' food bowls. I've seen them eat and they're ravenous. although they appear healthy. They seem to prefer sitting and sleeping in my garden than their own. They're literally always there.

I like having my French door open but it's getting to the stage where it's a major operation: make sure kitchen door is closed, make sure living room door is closed, alternate the two. My DD and I actually use water pistols on them to deter them, which works, but we can't stand guard with them all day and evening.

My cats swing between getting agitated and ignoring them.

I don't know why I'm posting to be honest. I thought about a cat screen but I believe they're not that effective. Thought about one of those electronic cat deterrents but that's going to affect our cats. Thought about going to speak to the neighbour but she's otherwise a good neighbour and I don't want any issues.

sigh

Certainly fewer gifts if kept in for dusk and dawn!

Luckily mine aren't hunters - the most they've ever "caught" us is a leaf

One of my cats never comes in. And the other 3 do, but get out of our bedroom window in the summer if they so please, go along the extension roof and into the garden. They get in the same way. One was curled up on the trampoline this morning.

I know it’s treating the symptom not the cause but we have microchip cat feeders and they’re brilliant. Maybe that would help, the cats would hopefully lose interest once they know they can’t access your cats food?

I don't have cats (thus no cat food) and next door's ones still try and come in.

Yeah I have these all over my house @RandomMess as I have 2 cats of my own plus also foster cats. They are brilliant 👏 I have an Amazon-bought mesh screen door for my French doors too which also keeps bugs out and has a huge zipped part so we can still step through it etc. One of my cats is blind so we cat-proofed a large part of our garden ourselves so now my cats are restricted to the garden and neighbours cats can't get in either 👏 best thing I've ever done and both my cats are fine and still have a large garden to play in. Worth doing if you can. Specialist companies do charge a lot but we bought angled brackets and mesh online and did it ourselves.

cats are most active at dawn and dusk OP so you can't realistically expect your neighbour to keep hers inside all night. I've had cats that run around like loonies miaowing half the night - they want to be off exploring in the summer months especially not locked inside. Maybe look into cat-proofing your own garden? We did ours very cheaply last summer.

When we adopted our cats from the Cats Protection League one of the conditions was that we keep them in at night. As well as issues mentioned by previous posters, more cat fights happen at night.

Let your neighbour know they are coming in and eating the food so if they get poorly as they have special diet etc or ask her to give you some cat food.

my cat is greedy and if we let her she would eat 4-5 packets a day and we get high protein food etc