How do I move a cat just round the corner?

[LilyCandelabra]

Cat is 12 and has lived his whole life at our current rental. We have bought a property about 500m away which we are doing up a bit before moving in shortly. Am fairly certain new house is in the area in which cat currently roams. How would you manage the move? When we have previously kept him in the house post-op he has gone stir crazy. Would keeping him inside for a few weeks be pointless anyway in this situation as he will easily find his way back to old house? Could we not bother and just keep fetching him back until he gets the message? We have a month's overlap left on the two properties. Any advice gratefully received. Thank you 🙏

Hi no advice but following as I’m in the same position! My vet said keep inside for 2 weeks which will be a challenge …

DM took over 2 older cats when the neighbour died.
Started just by feeding them but transition really only happened for the more wary one when she was kept in for three weeks.

We moved round the corner and cats would have 9-10ish. One is limpet-like attached to me but the other one a bit more aloof. Kept them in for 3 weeks and they were fine. The more aloof one did disappear for 48 hours (cue lots of waking the streets with my 10 year old calling his name forlornly) but someone said they’d seen him on the local FB page and then I was contacted by the new people in my house to say they’d seen him walk through the garden and then he came home and that was that. So yes, 3 weeks is the ideal I would say.

We did this - moved two streets away, and were really worried it would be confusing for our cat.

Nope. He followed us when we were working on the new house, and when we moved, he just accepted that was where he lived now.

He is very orange though. I would say it's dependant on your cat.

We did this- old house is less than 0.5miles away. It was winter though so she was no as bothered about being out. But we did 3 weeks in and then set up a large temporary catio for 4 weeks accessible through cat flap

I'd say try and keep him in for as long as he can bear. He'll desperately want out within hours though. Especially in this time of year.

Could you put a tracker in his collar if you're worried he might go missing? It's so close to his old territory that you'd probably find him back near the old house if he did do a runner briefly.

He may get into a bit of confrontation with the other local cats but they should learn to live with eachother after a few months.

I was in this situation with my first cat.
He'd been a stray who had decided to move in with me. I then moved to another rented flat a couple of streets away. Intended to keep him in for a few weeks but on the first night he woke me at about 4.00 in the morning demanding to go out (his usual M.O.). I relented (he was very demanding) and let him out of an upstairs window (onto a flat roof), thinking worse case he'd bugger off back to my previous flat and I'd find him there, or he'd just stay on the roof.
8 o'clock that morning he was miaowing outside our back door downstairs to get in. I was most impressed that he'd worked out the geography of the place and knew exactly where he lived.

He was a bloody clever cat though.

I wouldn't recommend this approach BTW 🤣.

I moved 2 minutes around the corner, and my cat just accepted it from day 1. He went back to the old house as part of his routine patrols, but always returned to the new house for meals and for bedtime.

It really depends on the cat.
Are there any busy roads between the two houses?