Cat gets into fights constantly outdoors and was wondering how to convert him from an indoor/outdoor cat to indoor only

I have a male 5 year old domesticated shorthair cat that’s neutered who has pretty much spent his entire life going in and out of the house. We thought to let him go outside just once when he was young because we thought it would be cute but the moment we tried to keep him inside he just began meowing like he was going to die so we just decided to give him a cat door.

Fast forward a couple of years and he’s started to get into fights with neighboring cats and has ended himself a visit at the vet because of it. We thought it was just a one time thing but we were clearly wrong because as of lately he’s been getting more and more aggressive and just yesterday I had to run outside to go prevent a fight from starting.

I’ve decided that if he continues with this behavior it’s going to cost not only me a few visits to the vet but also our neighbors and I don’t want to make them and their pets go through that. I know of a few tricks but none of them seem to be able to work to keep him inside since we’ve tried a few times before. He’s fine mostly throughout the day, he pretty much only goes outside at night and early morning so once we lock the door he’ll start screaming and scratching all of the windows and once even ripped up some furniture.

He’s a very active cat, I play with him for hours straight sometimes so I don’t think anymore playing with him will help to make him stay indoors. I also know that some people might recommend getting a bird feeder and hanging it outside of our window but that’s definitely not going to work. Every time, and I mean every time he sees a bird or a squirrel outside the window he’ll make a beeline straight to the cat door to try and kill it, usually succeeding.

If it sounds like keeping him indoors would be too hard perhaps you guys could try to recommend a way to stop the fighting from happening because eventually I feel like it’s going to happen every other night even though I would prefer to just make him indoor only.

submitted by /u/maIarky
[link] [comments]

from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/av3awk/cat_gets_into_fights_constantly_outdoors_and_was/