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Catting around causes neighborhood fur to fly

By Amy Dickinson, Tribune Content Agency on

Dear Amy: My wife and recently learned that our cat "Pumpkin" has taken to entering a neighbor's house through their cat door and picking fights with the neighbor's cat -- inside their house!

This resulted in the neighbor's cat having to be taken to the vet.

Pumpkin has been an outdoor cat for 10 years. The neighbors are new to the area.

We are, of course, appalled by our cat's behavior, but we are at a loss as to how to stop it, short of keeping our cat inside. Keeping him in full time would be awful, because when he wants to go outside, he yowls most pitifully and is aggressive and destructive.

Our neighbor has respectfully communicated the trouble Pumpkin has caused, requesting most recently that we keep him inside on a night when she would be out of town and unable to break up fights between the two cats.

Stopping this problem requires one of us to give up some freedom.

 

Either we have to keep Pumpkin inside, or our neighbor needs to give up her cat's ability to come and go freely through an open cat door.

It does seem a little unfair that we would have to keep Pumpkin inside so our neighbor's cat can go outside whenever it wants. We know we need to communicate respectfully with our neighbor to find a solution. Any ideas?

-- Peace-able Neighbors

Dear Neighbors: First of all, I want to thank "Pumpkin" for providing fodder for the most unusual question I've ever tackled in this space.

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