One of my cats regularly fighting strays.

[User5566]

Well a couple of months have passed and I'm pleased to say Seth hasn't had to go to a vet following a fight even once since my last post. Does this mean my behavioral approach works, or are we just lucky? Who knows.

Anyway, I decided to update this thread in hope it helps someone else with the same problem.

So what I did to make my cat(s) ignore other cats they used to fight every single time? First I have to say that before we used to shoo strays out of our property if we ever saw them. I think this made both of our cats a lot more aggressive (especially Seth). We changed this, and for the last couple of months we wouldn't shoo these other cats away(there are two that keep coming these days), but we would talk to them softly, ignore them, or hold our cats not allowing them to run to them.

I think this did help. Few days ago I even saw one of the strays walk few meters behind Seth, when I came out the stray run away and Seth didn't care at all for him.

 

[KingRichard]

Training him to spend most nights at home is definitely going to cut the number of opportunities for fighting. So I'm continuing that. I'm hoping to be able to at least cut on the number of these fights substantially.

I was reading because I have a similar, but less severe issue. And am also unwilling to make him an indoor only cat, he thinks that would be much worse than getting in the occasional fight...

For the most part I have my cat trained to come in when called. Some nights it takes a few tries, but he gets treats and pets for coming in when called. I find keeping him in at night and not letting him out right at 5am, but waiting until it's a little more light out helps.

I wonder if I can make friends with the local stray, similar to what seems to have helped reduce your cats urge to attack.

 

[User5566]

Now that some time has passed (almost 6 months) I think the method I described helps especially if you always have the same strays/neighbour's cats, but it didn't make the problem go away completely.

In last 6 months serious fighting happened only once for Ramzes and once for Seth, not long ago, just before the holidays. I think they both encountered the same "new cat", that was just passing through.