[Nyah]

I need some advice on a cat that wanders our neighborhood. His owners let him out for hours at a time, and he gets into garbage, provokes the dogs in the neighborhood and obviously knows no property boundaries (duh, he's a cat). This has been going on for about a year.

Here's my issue: I have two indoor cats of my own. Last spring was when we started seeing this cat around the neighborhood. One day, the cat was on our back deck while I was in my office. I heard one of my cats growling at the back door, so I got up to see what was happening and before I got there, my other cat came to check it out too. The cat that had been growling at the door turned all of his wrath on my other cat and literally kicked the #### out of him. We're talking biting, scratching, blood. This is called redirected aggression. I sustained some battle wounds as well trying to separate them. Meanwhile, neighbor cat is just sitting on the back deck watching this all go down. Anyways, at that point all trust that had been between my cats was gone (had them together for 6 years with no issues). This was last May. They now hate each other. They tolerate each other, but scrap regularly.

With winter the neighborhood cat hasn't been out as much, but now that the weather is warming up a bit we've started seeing him again over the last few weeks. I'm worried that the same thing will happen between my cats, without one of us there to stop it. We've been putting in complaints with the city, but they just get warnings. Two weeks ago, my boyfriend caught him and brought him over to their house (house number on the tags). The roommate answered and said that they've told the lady who owns the cat that it's not allowed outside and that we wouldn't see him again. This morning at 4:00am, my cat started freaking out at the back door again and sure enough: there's neighbor cat.

What are our options here? The city doesn't seem too willing to enforce their bylaw of no animals running at large and we've already tried talking to these people. This cat has shredded our garbage, dug in our garden and almost gotten us to the point of having to get rid of one of our cats because of their aggression towards each other. We're going to start looking into taking him to the pound, but I'm worried that'll cause conflict with their owners. What are impounding fees like? If we catch this cat again and have him impounded or take him to the Humane Society, what will these people have to pay to get him out? What if this keeps happening - does the fine go up every time your cat is caught at large?

I'm literally at my wits end with this. We've had to start separating out cats during the day as we can't trust that the neighbor cat won't come by while we're not home and cause aggression. Any advice is appreciated, and if you're a person who lets your cat outside thinking 'hey, it's just a cat, no harm can some of this...', you're completely and totally wrong.