What is the law and liability regarding a pet cat coming into my garden with my dog

I am an animal lover, not a great fan of cats but wouldn't wish harm upon any animal. I own a restricted breed dog also. The problem is there is a pet cat comes into our garden and treats it as its own. This is infuriating for a number of reasons

• As an owner of a restricted breed dog I am forced to go above and beyond to make sure my animal is under control and not imposing on anyone else, this doesn't seem to be the case for cat owners.
• I have to deal with it's **** and piss
• I have bird feeders that it has taken to scaring the birds away from
• My dog is friendly and I'm more worried that the cat will hurt him then he'll hurt it
• I rent in Dublin and to get a nice garden like this, given the current situation as we all know, means I fork out a tonne in rent each month. I am now paying for the privilege of dealing with cat **** and my dog going berserk to get out into his own garden, which he cannot. As it's friendly it doesn't run away from taps on the glass and comes right up.

I've no idea who owns this thing, it just appears out the back and disappears so short of knocking on the ~50 doors in proximity I've no one to follow up with.

But should my dog attack this cat, am I liable for anything? I feel like my only option here is to open the door and let what happens, happen. Ideally the cat would scarper and not come back, but should the dog get it am I liable? For context there are high walls/hedges all around the garden and the dog is secured away from anyone else's property.

Also is there any option to call animal control or something? I'm assuming no since it's owned and cats can just seemingly do what they like and impose on anyone property here.

Ashbx

There was a recent thread on this

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058186470

volchitsa

IME not many dogs will catch a cat that has a head start on them, so if you just want the cat to learn not to come in, make sure it's far enough away that it can get to the fence before the dog catches it, and then just let the dog out.

Once it's had a few scares, it will most likely stop coming in.

What you don't want is to let the dog catch the cat unawares (though TBH that's quite hard to do). Maybe put a bell on your dog's collar to warn the cat if you think that would save it from harm until it's learned the lesson? (Someone on the other thread suggested that)