Cats – you either love them or hate them, especially as they can be anti-social, and have no loyalty or problem roaming other people’s properties.
So when a Reddit user posted on the platform’s “Am I the A**hole” section about an aggressive cat living in her parents’ neighbourhood, it was surprising to learn that many people felt she would be.
The title of her post was: “Would I be the A**hole for confronting my neighbour about his aggressive cat?”
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She starts off by explaining that her parents have two cats, one aged five and the other aged 14. They live in the countryside where the properties have open gardens and no gates. Every neighbour has one or more cats.
Although the woman does not live at home anymore after moving away to study a couple of year ago, she comes home “quite often”.
Several years ago, a new family moved to the neighbourhood, bringing with them one cat. At the start, she says, it did not cause any problems. It did “hang around” the garden but her parents’ cats were not bothered. Fast forward a few months though, and the problems began.
“One of our cats had to be brought to the vet in an emergency, [with a] pierced eye and internal bleeding...and our other cat always comes home with small-ish injuries – missing a small part of his ear, and scabs everywhere (that usually get infected).
“The cat also comes in our house on the daily, stealing food and just frightening our pets. This has also been happening to other neighbours’ cats. As I said, I don’t live here anymore but it’s always upsetting to see my cats injured.”
The Redditor wanted to confront the neighbours as she feels that “if it were a dog attacking other dogs in the neighbourhood, then that dog would be kept on a leash and not let outside, and an aggressive cat should be treated the same way.
“I know it would be complicated since every house has a pet door, and you can’t really control a cat, but I feel something has to be done. My parents advised me not to confront the neighbours, since it could get them in trouble...and as I don’t live here anymore it would be selfish of me to start drama since I wouldn’t get any repercussions.
“Would I be the A**hole if I did confront the neighbours about their aggressive cat?”
In an edit to her post she writes that the cat has become so much of a problem for everyone in the neighbourhood that it “actually went missing for a few months before being found in a city about one hour away by car”.
“Everyone’s theory was that he got kidnapped because one of the people in the neighbourhood got sick of it attacking their cat.”
The Redditor also updated her original post saying: “My parents told me that they actually told the neighbours a few months back that they had to rush our cat to the vet several times because of their cat … and the neighbours simply did not care and had an attitude of ‘cats will be cats, whatever’.”
The overall consensus from Reddit users was that the young women would be the a**hole for confronting her parents’ neighbours as she should respect and honour their wishes.
Advice
Some commentators passed on tips and advice to try dissuade the aggressive cat from harming her parents’ cats, including things like them keeping their cats indoors. Others shared ways to dissuade the cat from coming on their property, such as installing motion sensor sprinklers, ultrasonic pest repellents, planting flowers and plants that have scents that repel cats, and spraying the cat with water every time it comes onto the property.
The Best Friends Animal Society, which describes itself as “the only national animal welfare organisation dedicated to ending the killing of dogs and cats in America's shelters”, posted this video on YouTube to give people ideas of how to keep cats away from areas or places they are not wanted.
WikiHow also offers the following tips, although most of these would only be practical if you did not have cats yourself:
- Eliminate food sources: Move your trash or bird feeders to remove the reason cats show up.
- Add fencing: One of the best ways to keep cats out is to block them physically. If you install a full-blown wooden fence, opt for fence boards with pointy tops so that the cats can’t hang out on top of them.
- Install motion-activated sprinklers: For a highly-functional solution, get some sprinklers installed. Whenever the cats wander into your garden, the sprinklers will kick on and spritz the cats to send them on their way.
- Try an ultrasonic device: Infrared ultrasonic devices will emit a high-frequency noise to scare cats. The sound won’t be audible to people, but to cats, it will be like nails on a chalkboard.
- Get a commercial repellent: There are repellents out there that replicate dog or big cat urine. If the cats smell a potential predator nearby, they’re naturally going to be dissuaded from sticking around for too long.
- Put pine cones or chopsticks in your yard: Laying rough items down in your soil will keep cats off.
- Get some cat-repelling plants: Coleus canina is hands-down the best plant for keeping cats away.
- Spray or sprinkle pepper in your yard: Cats dislike pepper, and they’ll naturally stay away if they smell it.
- Make your yard smell like citrus: Cats are also prone to avoid citrus-based scents, like lemon and orange.
- Deter cats with essential oils: Lavender, lemongrass, eucalyptus, and geranium all keep cats out.
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