Naughty Wandering Cat

roboticpink

Hi,

We moved house 4 months ago and did the usual keeping-the-cats-in-for-6-weeks trick to make sure they knew it was home. We didn't move very far (about half a mile) and we didn't want the cats to go wandering back to our old house so we were very cautious about letting them out.

All has been fine since, until last weekend we went away and let the cats fend for themselves for a day and a half (sat am - sun pm). Normally they are fine with this as we leave them a hopper of dry food and plenty of water, and they have access to outside so are very happy cats.

However on Sunday morning I had a text from my old neighbour to say one of our cats was in their house! Apparently the whole time we were living in our old house, our eldest cat was visiting them regularly, sharing their cat's food, sleeping on their sofa and even their bed (!) Clearly as we were away for more than 24 hours he got bored, went wandering and found his old stomping ground and his "best friend" - their cat...

We wouldn't mind him visiting but the way there crosses quite a busy road, so isn't ideal for a cat to be traversing twice a day (we are sure he would come back as he does love us.)

We plan to keep the cats in again for a while to try and re-acclimatise him and get him to forget about his old friend. But has anyone got any ideas how to stop this happening? The neighbours are being really good about letting us know when he shows up, so we just go and get him and take him home again - but it's happened 3 times this week so it's probably not a winner as a long-term situation...

If I may ask though please, no discussion about keeping cats indoors/cat-proofing garden - if you had met my cats you would know this also has no longevity as they are naughty little Houdinis who love to be outside...

Also don't think it would work to hand him over and leave him at theirs as we are pretty sure he would come back up to ours regularly if we did - across the same busy road!

Thanks in advance!