We seem to have a new cat appear in the neighbourhood over the last few months and it's causing an issue for our two girls that I need some advice with
We've got 2 female cats (Jasmine and Meg) who are around 7 and 5 years old. They both get on fairly well with each other and we generally don't have any issues with them
Over the last few months we've spotted a very large white cat (who I'm guessing may be a male mainly because it's so big) appearing in the garden at night (it doesn't usually show up until about 8pm).
One of our girls is petrified of it and tries to run away from it and get back inside whilst screaming her head off and she tries to hide in the house from it. Our younger cat Meg tends to square up to it and tries to chase it off and a few scraps have ensued
As soon as we hear any kind of commotion we rush outside and the white cat tends to scarper at the sight of us and we bring our girlies in. I don't think it's a stray as it's a beautiful long haired white cat and it looks really well fed and it's coat is in lovely condition (I can't see a collar on it but as it runs when it sees me I can't get close enough to check). I've asked around with the neighbours but no-one seems to know who it belongs to.
Thankfully our girls are always kept in overnight anyway but on a couple of occasions over the last few weeks this other cat has tried to smash it's way in through the cat flap in the early hours of the morning waking the whole house up
On the first occasion it completely smashed through the catflap and I had to buy a new one and then a few nights ago it smashed it again at about 3am
My other half ran downstairs and chased it off before it actually got in to the house and we've managed to fix the catflap and then last night about 9pm there was another fight in the garden between the white cat and Meg (thankfully she doesn't seem hurt).
I'm just not really sure what I can do to try and improve the situation so any advice would be greatly received :flowers:
I want to try and buy some sort of cover for the catflap to protect it from being continually smashed up - this is the one we have...........
http://www.petsathome.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/en/pets/white-4-way-manual-locking-cat-flap-300Pets At Home don't seem to sell any kind of cover for it but I wondered if anyone had any ideas for what I can use? I've previously looked into getting one of those microchip reading catflaps but they look quite tricky to set up and I think if the intruder cat is just going to smash his way through a locked catflap anyway I'm not sure how useful they'd be?
I'm hoping that as summer turns to winter and the weather is colder the new cat may not be out so much overnight but I'm just looking for any ideas to try and avoid my girls getting injured in a fight and just making them feel a bit happier as I think Jasmine in particular is getting quite stressed by the whole situation
Our catflap leads into the utility room so the last couple of nights I've shut the utility room door at night and put the litter tray in the kitchen instead so that if the white cat does manage to get it in can't go beyond the utility room and get to our two girls
The other thing that worries me is there are also occasions when our girls won't come in at night as much as we try to get them in and I don't like the thought of them being outside with a potential fight situation brewing up
