As the title suggests, Toffee has been regularly roaming outside at night after he'd prefer to spend all day indoors, and I was wondering why this was the case until I discovered he's getting into fights with a neighbourhood cat who has been previously coming into his garden. This cat started to come into our garden and "tease" Toffee when he would be eating or sitting watching the birds on the patio (something he normally does when he's outside). I've had to shoo this other cat out of the garden a couple of times, so have managed to identify him (he lives a couple of houses down from ours, so it wouldn't surprise me if Toffee has been venturing into his garden too). We retrieved a piece of his fur off Toffee's last night when he came in and Toffee has small scratch marks on his face from where they've clearly been fighting.
This is unlike Toffee's normal behaviour, he's normally very timid around strange neighbourhood cats - he was always scared of the cats living next door to us and never fought with them. Aside from physical scars, Toffee doesn't seem to be visibly psychologically damaged by the fights, but I'm worried about him. We're keeping him indoors as much as we can but he likes to spend up to an hour a day at least outdoors, so it's been tricky to tempt him to stay inside! I was wondering if anyone has any advice or tips on how to get him to stop going out to fight with this other cat? We have some Feliways and other calming sprays and are trying them.
This is unlike Toffee's normal behaviour, he's normally very timid around strange neighbourhood cats - he was always scared of the cats living next door to us and never fought with them. Aside from physical scars, Toffee doesn't seem to be visibly psychologically damaged by the fights, but I'm worried about him. We're keeping him indoors as much as we can but he likes to spend up to an hour a day at least outdoors, so it's been tricky to tempt him to stay inside! I was wondering if anyone has any advice or tips on how to get him to stop going out to fight with this other cat? We have some Feliways and other calming sprays and are trying them.