Unreasonable neighbor

Hello, I have lived in an HOA Condo Community for 2 years. I love how close I have become to my neighbors with the exception of one. We have a neighbor who constantly complains about the overpopulation of stray cats and we understand and have acknowledged it for some time. We do Catch Neuter Release as often as we can and that is still not enough. She claims it is the HOA's responsibility to fix the issue. She has threatened with her attorney for MANY reasons. She feels she is being discriminated against because we are not planting a tree in her yard and soon as she says to. The board members fear her and keep letting her get away with her demands. I personally have yelled at her because she kept accusing my cat of going into her backyard and that she had it on security footage. After reviewing the footage it was not my cat because my cat is in indoor cat. She is a neighbor from hell and I wish she would just get up and move because she seems so unhappy with everything. I can go on with the amount of stories I have about her. Everything circles back to she would do it herself but that's why she pays HOA fees! I can't with her anymore.

Josie,

Sorry to hear you are having issues with your neighbor.
The old adage "you can pick your friends but not your family" applies to neighbors to.

If I were on the board, I would tell her to call animal control.
However, I am not on your board.

I would suggest the board do some research on stray cats and what can be done.

Best advice I can offer toward her is try and find some common ground and be courteous to each other.

Not what you really wanted to hear.
Hope it helps,

Tim

I just learned to completely ignore her. She is rude and after having an altercation she no longer speaks to me which works in my favor. I remember being a new neighbor and she rang my doorbell to talk to me about how cats were an issue.

Thank you... Yeah suing her would be a massive headache. Can the Board members ask for her "attorneys" business card? She has never actually sued but always threatens that she has been speaking with her attorney.

Based on the info you have provided our Board would ignore her. Threats are a dime a dozen.

Yes, this person is what we refer to as a Chronic Complainer, and every community has a few.

The problem is that she wants drama, and everybody - including the board - is giving it to her.

You need to keep interactions with her as brief and boring as possible. For other owners: "Hello, nice day, ooops gotta run, see you later." For the board: "thank you for your comments" or "we will research this further", end of discussion. The trick to this is consistency. It doesn't do much good if she gets nothing the first nine times but on the tenth you get sucked into her drama - it just tells her she needs to act up ten times to get what she wants. We dealt with a few when I was on the board, and it took a year or more for them to get the message, but in the end they did get it.

As for stray/feral cats, check with local animal control, but at some point there isn't a whole lot you can do about them - they breed faster than you can catch/neuter/release. I've found that coyotes and other predators are more effective at controlling strays and pets that are allowed to roam off leash (judging from the tales of woe on the area NextDoor pages).