The 60-year-old woman's cat was relieving itself in the neighbor's garden. She will have to pay 100 euros in damages.

A woman in her sixties from Agde, a French town on the shores of the Mediterranean, will have to pay 100 euros in damages to her neighbor for allowing his cat to continue coming and going on his property, the Béziers court announced on Tuesday, whose decision claims to take into account the "well-being" of the animal.

The conflict between Dominique Valdès, a 65-year-old painter and owner of Rémi, a ginger cat, and her retired neighbor has been making headlines for over two years, earning the feline a start of national fame.

Rémi is being criticized for repeatedly going into the adjacent garden to relieve himself and for urinating on a duvet cover inside the house. In July 2024, his landlord was sued in the Béziers civil court by his retired neighbor.

On January 17, 2025, Ms. Valdès was ordered to pay 450 euros in damages, to prevent the cat from entering the premises – under penalty of a fine of 30 euros per day of delay – and to pay him the sum of 800 euros for legal costs.

Six months later, the neighbor demanded that the fines be "liquidated," since, according to him, the cat continues to jump over the wall separating the two properties.

In his judgment delivered on Tuesday, the enforcement judge of the civil court considered that the photos provided at the hearing in February by the plaintiff only allowed him to attest "with certainty" that it was indeed Rémi for a period of 12 days, according to a statement from the court.

It's difficult to stop him

As a result, the penalty was "reduced to the sum of 100 euros", the judge also taking into account the "difficulty" for the owner in preventing her cat from reaching the neighboring dwelling.

Furthermore, the magistrate did not impose any new penalties, considering that it is not possible to prevent this behavior, "inherent in the nature of the cat and escaping the control reasonably expected of its owner," without "resorting to measures likely to harm its well-being."

However, this does not "relieve the owner of her obligation to stop the cat's intrusion" into the neighbor's property, the judge added, emphasizing that the neighbor also retains the possibility "of initiating, if necessary," a new "action for compensation for his damages."