Hello, my names rachel, i currently have 3 cats and was looking for some advice before i lose my sanity!
basicly... we have Lucy a 13 yr old female we have had her since a kitten no problems atall
last september i took on two surviving kittens that my friend had handreared since they were 4 days old (found under garden shead)
Jacob and Mia are now 10 months old, neuted vacinated, microchiped ect.
We live in a fairly quite area, however there is a footpath at the end of our road that leads down to the main road, unfortunatly lucys brother got ran over there when he was six. for the cats to get down there they have to go through three sets of gardens if that makes sence.
Lucy is allowed free acess to the outside whenever she likes as she is 13 and has been fine so far
Jake and Mia are allowed out during the day but they are called in for night about 7 and are usally in by 8-8.30 at the latest
the problem starts when everyone is out for the day, (jake and mia are my cats but i like with my parents and sister)
a few months ago jake didnt come in at night we went out looking for him and in the morning we found him stuck in a (very small) tree at the corner of this footpath
last saturday everyone was out from 10.30 - 8, when i got home from work i called them in, lucy and mia were in no problem but jake wasnt.
eventually at 10pm...i went looking for him, i found him in the frount garden of the house at the bottom of the footpath....less than 5 meters from the main road, he was fine but was a bit disorientated and very pleased to see me.
hence my problem, i dont trust jake not to wander to far and get him self into trouble i was looking at fitting one of those pet porte cat flaps so that i can set it to keep jake in when we are out for the day and let the others out, but it dosent work like that, are there any catflaps that do?
i have considered cat proofing the garden but my parents wont let me....all i get is "hes just a cat". there is no way he could become an indoor cat as he would end up escaping and his general behaviour is a nigthmare anyway and i feal that confining hime indoors will make it worse.
has anyone else had this sort of problem, did your cat grow out of the wandering, will he learn from his mistates and not go back down to the main road?
i dont know what else to do....idealy i would like to move out and cat proof my own garden, but thats not looking likley for atleast 2-3 years
at the minute its rather controling my life, i dont want to go out for to long as i am worried he will go wandering and holidays are a nightmare,
we have never used catteries and i dont rearly want to.
sorry for the long ramble and bad spelling, but has anyone got any ideas?
thanks
rachel