For the past few years we have been feeding a stray cat, presumed to be feral, who has since come to live on our property. She (assumed, as we can’t get close enough to verify) has a clipped ear, so was likely spayed by a catch and release program.

When she first started coming around, she was extremely thin and her fur was dishevelled, and she was so afraid of us that she would bolt at the first sign of movement or at the sound of voices or the door opening. Since then, she has picked up a healthy amount of weight, her coat has thickened, and she has become complacent enough to walk beside our legs when we go out to fill her bowl. She meows at the door multiple times a day for food and small bits of cheese, rubbing her face against the glass, and waits for us outside her dog house when she sees our cars pull up in the driveway. She will even sniff my fingers, but still refuses to let anyone touch her.

In the last week, there have so far been THREE new cats suddenly coming into our property to harass her and eat her food. They are clearly not strays, as they look fed and healthy, and they are not afraid of us at all, coming right up to our back door and staring at us. Meanwhile, our feral is timid. The most I’ve seen her do is press herself tightly up against the door and watch them anxiously from a distance, refusing to eat what has been put out for her in fear. She runs away when they start fights with her and disappears for long stretches of time.

We have tried yelling and making noise, even throwing things at these cats to scare them away, but they keep coming back and bullying our feral. I am afraid they’ll hurt her, deprive her of food, or worse, scare her into the path of an oncoming vehicle. We’ve considered letting our Pekingeses out to chase them off when they show up, but they are just as likely to scare or attack our feral (when they aren’t being too dumb to even realise they can go through the open door).

We have had problems with other strays coming into the property to fight her in previous years, but those issues resolved when the cats were either adopted by friends, sadly got hit by cars in the neighbourhood, otherwise seemed to leave and find new territory.

We’ve tried to coax her inside the house, but she refuses to step through the door. We can’t catch her as she runs away when we try to touch her. The last thing I want to do is make her feel like we’re unsafe again and scare her off completely.

I don’t know what suddenly made these cats show up. They never come together, so I don’t know if they are from a single household that may have just moved in somewhere nearby, but it seems like every other day a new one appears. We recently changed to a more expensive brand of cat food, so they may have been drawn by that, but now that they’re here I don’t think changing back will dissuade them from coming.

TL;DR, how can I prevent or discourage other cats from coming to fight our outdoor feral for her food without also scaring her away? I want to take her in, but we have two aggressive indoor dogs and she also won’t let us touch her.