Sorry I know this is a dog forum but hoping you may have some advice on this.  I get on very well with my next door neighbour she comes in and checks on my cat and we look after hers if she goes away but the lady at the back of us has started feeding my nieghbours cats salmon and tuna and the other day both next doors cats were missing all day and turned up the next night in the lady at the backs shed my cat doesn't like people so won't go to the lady at the back although for salmon and tuna he might eventually but today the little girl who lives at the back was bouncing up and down trying to get a look at my kitten.  Would it be rude to ask her not to feed my cats?  Next door isn't to happy about it.

Make sure you tell her straight.  My neighbours used to feed my cats, I asked time and again for them not to feed them, it all came to an aburpt end when my boy (their favourite) was run over and killed one night - the reason he was out at all was he didnt bother coming in for food so I couldnt shut him in

You cant stop someone feeding your cats, afterall im sure the cats go onto their property,  but you can ask them nicely not to - use my story as an example :(

a friend had this problem once & came up with a solution of sorts. They told the offending feeder that their cat was under the vet for a dietary problem & if it was fed anything other than a special diet (bought at expense from the vet) then it would be almost istantly sick & diarohea plus it was a very contagious illness that human s could catch. That did the trick!

That's inspired, Sam! Brilliant idea! :D

Good idea my boy is tempted in of an evening by meat which he doesn't get of a day so if he gets it elsewhere he won't come in my oh says I am going to have a problem cos they will go across her wall not in her garden that i have noticed.

Love it Sam :D :D.  I would tell them not to feed it if it were my cat .

Perhaps suggest that as she is so insistant on sharing the food bill and therefore your cat, she should also share the vet's bill, vaccintations, neutering, flea control, worming tabs, etc.  I would make sure I had a list of the actual prices as well and could she supply you with her phone number to pass onto the vet in case of an emergency.

Might be worth asking if she wants to help clean out litter tray to he goes out to play but comes in to use the loo strange cat

I would say politely that the Cats need a special diet and anything else could kill them!  Even put a tag on them saying something like "needs medication, please do not feed"
Dawn.

People who do this really enfuriate me.  It is dangerous and when someone else is feeding your cat it does become hard to get your cat in at night/when it's dark for their own protection.

I had this problem many years ago with a neighbour of mine who used to be a friend.  We got a brother and Sister cat from WGAS when our cat was in a RTA & although he survived he lost control of his bowell and bladder and had to be PTS.  We got the cats because myself and the children were devastated at losing the family pet, and I'd also recently split from my husband so the children were overly affectionate with the new cats focusing lots of love on them.

The only pet the neighbour had was a dog, she also had 2 children (one at the same school as my eldest daughter) and the boy in the neighbouring family would taunt my daughter (7) that her cat loved them more and had left our family just like her Dad (a lovely boy!).  Understandably my daughter would get upset at the taunts, the male of the cat was her cat so this added insult to injury, the female of the pair was very small and vocal, a bit timid and had taken to me and used to avoid the children.  I explained to my neighbour that the situation was upsetting my daughter already sensitive from the matrimonial split, & that she'd grown specifically fond of the male cat and it used to go up initially to her room and help her to get to sleep early evening.

Many times the cat would be missing, and because of the RTA on our older cat we would all be worried that he'd been knocked by a car and this was why we couldn't get hold of him, so many a sleepless night was had.

I repeatedly asked the neighbour not to feed the cat, and she assured me that she had been but she wasn't any longer.  One day our male cat had been missing for a couple of days and both myself the children were distraught so I approached the neighbour who's been feeding him.  The way the houses were set out was with 2 doors at the front of the house, one opening on to the hall and one opening on to the kitchen.  She must have been expecting someone else as when I knocked she called to come through the kitchen, as I did so there was the cat bed, the place mat and food bowls with fresh fish (and milk which I never feed to my cats) in them, as well as an array of cat toys.

I was so angry that I walked straight out again and went to my house aware that I might just blow up at her, and I did not want any trouble within the neighbourhood, so I explained to her later when I had calmed down that the cat was on a special diet and it was costing me money in vet bills and also that because the cat was spending so much time at hers, that I was missing veterinary check ups.  I figured if she liked the cat that much she wouldn't want this to happen as a result of her intervention.  The diet and vet thing was a total fabrication but I was getting desperate and just wanted our cat back!

As it happened this woman also had a husband that worked away, and didn't like cats (this was the reason they didn't have their own cat), so when he would come home they would move all the cat paraphenalia and shoo my cat away.  As he'd been away on a long work contract the cat had got used to staying with them and forgotten to come home almost all the time, the child of their family was still saying hurtful things to my daughter about how he had her cat and how lovely and fluffy it was at night.  I had rung WGAS who had come up with the dietry idea - that had failed, but I was keeping them informed of the situation, as technicaly the cat remains their property throughout it's life (or it did in those days I am not sure if it's changed now).

We were fed up and went to the Blue Cross in Kimpton and got another kitten, the female cat took to it and my daughter was slightly consoled.  Then the neighbours hubby got a new contract and was home a lot more, so the days when they would not allow the cat access increased in frequency and lenght.  This meant the cat we'd originally had as ours started to want to come back to ours at these times, but he would attack the other cats in the household in the process.  We tried to work through it, but in the end I rang WGAS and they said that they wanted the cat back as it was unsatisfactory.   They even did me a letter to show the woman concerned.

We did this and it was horrible to have to do.  On top of this we had the whole cliquey neighbourhood turn on us and everyone was stopping us in the street telling us how we broke their hearts by being so selfish!!!!!

I got so fed up of it all that I was glad when we moved away from there to a larger house, I would never have believed how much trouble and ill feeling one cat could cause!  My daghter was bullied at school over it, and I was given the cold shoulder at all the Mums and Tots meetings locally - pathetic.

I really hope you manage to sort it out amicably - keep us posted.  The tags with the food warning on them sound a good idea :)  I think my tactic on that failed as the friend guessed I was making it up!

Oh Chi-Chi that is awful how could anybody be so cruel to a child if she wanted her children to have a cat so badly she should have made a stand against her oh your poor daughter and on the tail of loosing other cat and the divorce you really can't understand some people can you.  Things will be changing soon for the better I hope my Mums cat is coming back to stay with us at the end of October and after much talking to my dearly beloved we have decided she is not going back to my mums next year if anything will make them think twice about encouraging cats my Mum's cat will I love her but she is definatley not good publicity for cats in general we haven't broken it to the dogs she is coming back poor things what a shock that will be

It's ages away now CLM so I am well over it, but it was very upsetting at the time.

Dogs and cats, so funny the way they behave towards one another.  Wizzy our grey cat has grown up with Angelica my first Chihuahua, and they are so lovingly bonded.  As the cat grew up a bit she did get fed up with Jelly wanting to play all the time, which is why we bought our second Chihuahua Cino as friend.  Wizzy now accepts all Chihuahuas unquestioningly, but the other dogs have to pass the Wizzy "I'm going to charge you and frighten the life out of you test"  :D