I am taking care of a friends cat during the day because where we are it’s hot and he doesn’t have air. So I took the cat since I work from my home
I live on the 23rd floor of a high rise. Unlike the other apartments, I have a balcony, I don’t care for a lot of air, so I left the cat in the air and went out on the balcony. It’s fairly big. It’s a concrete balcony so the cat can’t slip thru bars or anything.
I was out there on my computer and the cat followed me so I let her sit out there. My wife came back and was horrified.
She said it would jump off
Now I could understand this if I lived on the second floor, how it might jump. Or I could see if there was another balcony or a tree it MIGHT try to jump. But I say the cat isn’t stupid. It can there is no other balcony on this side of the builidng. and it can see it is 23 stories up.
While I’m sure accidents can happen, I got to wonder, just how stupid would a cat be. I think it’d have enough sense to know it can’t fly. And like I said, it can see there is no other balconies or trees to jump to.
I have seen some stupid cats in my life. See a mouse and BAM!
Besides, as you yourself said, cat doesn’t need to jump. It could just be sitting on the railing and if it’s a clumsy cat, or gets startled, fall over the edge.
The cat could easily decide to jump up on the balcony wall, as if it were jumping onto a piece of furniture (not knowing that there was nothingness on the other side of it), miscalculate, and then fall off.
If they see something interesting – a bird or a flying bug, say – it has the potential to override their otherwise perfectly good sense and they may leap at it. Or they may try and reach out and grab it and lose their balance.
I’m only on the 6th floor but I will NOT let my cats out on the balcony under any circumstances. This stems from a right scare the wife and I got a couple of years ago. Tilly, our youngest, got herself out on the balcony. There’s a gap betweel the adjoining wall of my balcony and my neighbour’s where the wall approaches the railing, and it’s small enough for cats to get through. (Or used to be before they redid all the balconies) She’d gotten through to the next balcony over, and was returning by way of the balcony railing. Now this railing is painted metal and rounded on top. That freaked us out enough, and upon realizing this we were trying to urgently coax her back into the apartment.
Then her hind paws slipped.
In a moment of sheer terror we both screamed her name. Fortunately, she had an extremely tenuous grip on the railing with her rear claws, and only a marginally better grip with her front. She managed to claw her way back to right, where she jumped down and came back in. We heaved a sigh of relief and closed the balcony door but good.
I’m up high enough so we don’t get bugs or birds, and all that is out there is two chairs and a table, which I’m using one of and the table.
I just like the breeze, and it’s 95º today and that is why I have the cat during the day, (so my neighbor who is gone all day doesn’t have to run the a/c all day during this heatwave).
The cat can stay in the apartment in the air, but the cat don’t want to stay in the a/c it screams at the door and when I let the cat on the balcony, it just sits on the concrete in the hot whether. It’s not like a regular balcony. The way the building is the bottom of the balcony is the roof of the apartment below me.
I guess if you say cats can be stupid. Since it just seems to want to sit outside, how about if I put a leash on it. It just sits there anyway.
I guess another question is why a fuzzy hairy cat wants to be out in the 95º. (and before anyone says, the ledge of the balcony is like 4 feet so I get a breeze being up so high, but the cat is not getting that breeze. )
If you must let her out there, a leash and harness is a good idea. If she should decide to jump up on the balcony edge you will be able to stop her.
I lost a cat in Hawaii to a similar situation. I had a window open about 5 inches for some fresh air - it was blocked by a chest of drawers. I didn’t know Rash could or would reach it. He did. I guess he overbalanced. We were 18 floors up.
Rash, Mama is sorry I didn’t know you could reach that window. Mama is sorry mama is so sorry…
There’s a cat around here that forced its way into the gap between two sides of a grill and burned itself. They thought the grill would be enough.
Cats can be pretty dumb.
As for a leash, I dunno, try it. Every time i’ve seen anyone try to put a cat on a leash it results in disaster…but that doesn’t mean your cat might not be Ok with it.
my cat will tolerate a leash, but must be closely supervised while on one.
i haven’t had a problem with him trying to jump too far (tho i’ve heard a lot of scary stories about cats doing that) the little snit is incredibly good at wriggling backwards out of the harness, no matter how tightly it’s fastened.
I went out and bought her a harness. I showed her the edges of the balcony and how high up she was and how there’s nothing to leap to. She doesn’t mind the harness.
Since the balcony is large and the lease is only 5 feet, she can’t even get to the edge of the balcony. The balcony as I said is big like a patio.
So I tied the cat up to the table, and it’s just sitting there now. She doesn’t even move, like I said I don’t know why she wants to be outside in the heat, I have a glass door so she can see me from the inside. I guess being an inside cat this is as close to the “great outdoors” as she’ll ever get.
Or maybe she likes company cause if I go in she follows me in.
I guess I’m used to “real” cats. I grew up in the rural area, and we had cats and a three story barn. I guess I’m used to those cats.
Only two days ago I saw a pet ambulance pull up to my building and take away a very nearly dead cat that had jumped from a 6th floor balcony. (In my building, the apartments are 2 storeys, so really it was the 12th.)
Don’t let the cat out there. Cats like to jump on things, like railings. Sometimes they aren’t as graceful as they think.
I used to live on the third floor of a complex where there was a little lake inbetween two buildings. My balcony looked out over the lake and the buildings on the opposite side had the same. One time I was looking out my balcony window and saw the neighbor’s cat lose her balance and topple off the edge. I swear I felt my heart stop. I ran out and found it hiding in the bushes, but okay. I managed to alert the family and they came down to get her.
I would never trust a cat with a balcony any higher than that one and wouldn’t even have let my cat on my balcony there.
Cats do jump off and die. I had a cat who did this and it was an incredibly sad thing. It’s not a dumb cat thing. It’s just that cats like to jump on things, betting that they won’t fall. And most times, they’re right.
So while I wouldn’t go into panic mode every time the cat goes out on the balconey, I would be very watchful and careful. Don’t let it jump on anything while it’s out there, and don’t let it be out there unattended.
Re the leash thing: It’s not that I think that cats will jump and then maybe hang themselves :eek:, it’s just that every cat I’ve ever seen on a leash turrns into this stubborn little fury. You wanna walk this way, so they sit there, back arched, with the leash taut, refusing to move. You want to go up the steps, they wanna go down. And god forbid you try to insist! They turn into little raging maniacs.
And this is not all me. I have a scar on the inside of my thigh where a cat on a leash bit me. In his defense, he was scared by a dog, but I had already tried to “walk” him - with permission from his owner - and we’d given up and simply sat on the steps, which is when the dog came out across the street. Ever since that time, I have never walked a cat on a leash again, though I have watched - and laughed at - other people.
For me a leash is not to “walk” the cat - mine turn into inanimate lumps of fur at the mere suggestion that they “walk” on one. It is to be able to let them down - to roll in the grass, etc., and still have some amount of control over where they can go. The harness I use is snug enough that I can get to them before they can get out of it.
Take them for a walk? Ha! Take them for a drag? Maybe…
It really depends on the cat. I let mine out on the balcony and she’s happy to just lie there and observe what’s going on below. She’ll watch birds, but won’t chase them.
Then, I once had a neighbor who let their young kitten out on their 4th floor balcony. It jumped off and broke all four legs (it’s recovered now).
What I did to find out whether my cat could be trusted out there or not was I started taking her out on a leash and harness and sitting with her. If she was good, she got a treat when we came back in. I eventually progressed to tying the leash to a chair, and watching her but not going out with her. Then I let her off it completely and am able to let her out with minimal supervision. She’s an unusually docile and compliant cat, though.
