Until the SDMB I had never heard of indoor cats. I am sure there are indoor cats in NZ, I just don’t know anyone who has one nor have I ever heard about anyone that had one. I am sure there are some expensive breeds kept for shows and breeding that can’t go roaming around, but as far as average moggies go?
I have two cats. I have window that is open 24/7 (on a burgular catch) and the cats go in and out about a gazillion times a day. Being an insomniac I know that “out at four am, in at 6 am” is especially popular with both the (fixed) boys. Something about being outside in the dark hours entices the boys.
When they are in, they are asleep on one of the following, bed, top of drier, couch or beanbag. When they are out, they seem to be on either the deck or the back lawn sunning themselves (oh to have the life of a cat).
My current boys are 4 years old. My previous cat is 17 and living with my mother. They go in and out as they please and would drive me nuts if they were always inside. I am not a cat person, but I am an animal person. My boys know when dinner is and are always waiting at the bowl half an hour before hand. My child is 12 and never feels happy in bed unless “his” cat is there, in bed at bedtime (little does he know that half an hour later his cat is out the window). I know many people who dote on their cats far more then I would ever want to but none keep their cats inside all the time.
I have two questions.
To those Non Americans (Europeans, Aussies, Candians, NZers and everyone else). Are indoor cats common or even heard of where you are?
To Americans. Why do you keep your cats inside. I understand if you live in the middle of a big city but if you are in the suburbs? I understand Rabies is an issue there (we don’t have Rabies here) but is disease the only reason? I have wondered this often. Mostly when threads like “my cat wants to go outside” or declawing threads arise. When my boys decided scritching on the couch was a good idea, I put them outside everytime I caught them at it.
As I said I’m not a cat person, though I have lived with cats for a long long time. They seem like mini tigers to me. I can’t imagine telling my boys they couldn’t go outside.
I’m sure that Jake and Scout would love to go outside.
They aren’t allowed to for a couple of reasons.
They’re declawed (and were when I got them). If I let them go outside, they have no defense from other animals.
Disease. Because I informed the vet that they are inside only cats, there were vaccinations they weren’t given (I just told the vet to give them what she felt was necessary).
Traffic. People don’t pay a lot of attention in the parking lot of my apartment building. I wouldn’t want to wake up one morning and have no kitties.
I’m in an apartment on the second floor, and for them to go outside, they’d have to go down the hall to the stairs (or the elevator). They’d have to do the same to come back - or I’d have to be with them. Not going to happen.
So they stay inside, they’re happy, they do get a little frustrated when the wind starts blowing the leaves across the balcony and they want to pounce so bad…but then they attack my feet under the blankets at night.
As an American, I always had cats that went outside, however all but one ended up as road kill. With my present cat I was living in a third floor apartment when I got her, and therefore had no choice. When I moved, I let her out on a harness once in a while and she just wandered around and sniffed stuff. Now at five years old, I’ll let her out in the front yard (no more harness) and she’ll chase grasshoppers and if shes lucky a lizard, but she won’t wander off or go far, and if she even thinks a dog is barking 7 countys over she hauls ass right back inside. I think this one is an indoor cat by choice at this point or is just smart enough to know that she doesn’t know how to survive out there.
I should mention my cats have entirely stupid names, Zorro cause he has a mask (ok not sooo dumb) and Meowth, after a Pokemon (very very dumb, one advantage to having indoor cats is never having to call a Pokemon name across the neighbourhood)
The disease thing, the boys got all the jabs they were supposed to. To me that meant they were free to frolic.
Traffic. I live on a fairly busy suburban street. The boys seem to have car sense. The 17 yr old cat I mentioned in the OP now lives in a very busy street. She has never lived away from trafic and though she likes to play the sit-in-the-driveway-as-the-car-comes-for-you-till-the-last-possible-moment game. She realises it is a game and skedaddles just as she should.
The apartment thing I understand. My boys have 2 stories to get up to, to get to their window, but it isn’t stairs and they are never going to meet people on the way. I fully understand the apartment situation. I just don’t understand the suburban situation.
I live in rural England and indoor cats are rare, but they do exist. A friend of my dad had an indoor cat which fell out of a (ground floor) window once, it was so terrified it bolted to the shed and stayed there ages.
I can understand indoor cats in an apartment building, but where they can get out, roam, catch mice, etc. it seems cruel (IMHO) to keep them inside.
In addition to traffic, and catching bugs, there is also the fact that if the cat got out, it might not come back. We got out cat from the shelter and she has never even been in our yard. I’m not sure she would run into the house if she were frightened–she might just run.
I would also mention that there are quite a few sick people in the world who like to lure cats and do horrible things to them (there was a thread about this in the pit a bit ago, let me see if I can find it, sorry, no luck), like cut them with knives and set fire to them. Cats that live with people tend to be more trusting than those that are exclusively outdoor kitties. I would prefer to keep my cats away from those folks, and so we have indoor kitties exclusively. I am also trying to keep the cats away from the people who would trap them and shoot them because the cat was in their flower bed, or caught a pretty bird, as well as being a good neighbor by not letting our cat dig up said flower bed.
Also, my mother is phobic about rodents and knows that if the cat goes out, it will probably bring something home.
We added up the other day how many places the 17 year old cat had lived. Turns out she had lived at seven different houses (and with 4 different dogs and 3 different cats…all with only 2 owners , mostly me and now my mum)
Seems she adjusts to change quite well. She HATES moving, but adjusts well. After one move she went AWOL for 3 days and I must admit I was in a panic, in retrospect she was checking out the neighbourhood.
I’m a dog person but dogs are much more needy then cats. Cats seem always able to find their way in the world.
The local leash law also applies to cats, you see… and if animal control sees one of my cats outside my property, they can and do catch it and charge me an insane fee to get it back.
The fact that fences do not stop cats seems to have escaped the local politicians.
Eh. As I’m walking from the bus station every morning I see “lost cat” signs on poles, at least one I can think of offering a pretty substantial reward ($200 American). There’s traffic even in suburban areas; someone might never know if his cat was made roadkill. That alone would make me want to keep my cats inside.
Then there’re dogs. My girlfriend’s grandmother took in a stray kitten and let her run outside; Edna found out later that the poor thing had been torn apart by some dogs. There’re cat fights, too. Diseases. Fleas. Dead animals on the doorstep (I’m touched, really, but …)
If my cats weren’t happy, I’m not sure what I’d do. But they are; none of them even try to get out anymore. They play with each other and all seem very content with their lots in life.
Canadians most certainly keep their cats inside. Not all, maybe not even the majority, but yes of course we have heard of it and practice it.
Cats do not always find their way in the world. Around here, outdoor cats are hit by cars, killed by dogs, skunks and racoons, subject to disease, parasites and injury-site abcesses, lured by sickos as mentioned above, etc, etc.
We see their little corpses by the roadside with dismaying regularity and it’s quite unnecessary because cats can be perfectly happy never leaving the house.
Why are my cats indoor-only? Well, there’s the traffic, the cat fights and resulting wounds and abcesses, the neighborhood dogs (and at my parents’ house, the feral dogs and the coyotes), the antifreeze leaks (and the sickos who leave dishes of antifreeze out to poison cats), the people who leave rat poison out, and the fact that they’re so sweet and so personable that someone might just scoop them up and take them home. That’s not even counting the frightening volume of people who think it’s fun to use kitties for target practice, or to put rubber bands around their tails or legs, or to cut them up, or set them on fire, or jam things up their asses.
Every day I go to work and see the things that happen to cats who roam free, and I’m not leaving my girls vulnerable to that shit. Not while there is breath in my body.
In Calgary (and quite a few Canadian cities, I believe), there is a cat bylaw that makes it illegal to allow your cats to roam free. Cats must be inside or on a leash, or you are breaking the law here. There are many reasons for this - some are to protect the cats, and some are to protect home-owners from damage done by other people’s cats, and some are just because this is a big city and we have no interest in having a huge feral cat population. Although they would probably all freeze to death and starve in winter, come to think of it.
That’s just the way it is here - my two girls are inside kitties only. They would love to go out, but it’s just not for them - they don’t have all the shots, they don’t know how to deal with traffic, they don’t know how to deal with dogs or other cats attacking them. What really bugs me, though, is people who break the law and let their cats roam free, and those cats come to my house and claw my trees, pee on my step, dig in my garden, and make my cats crazy by fighting/mating right outside our windows.
Oh yeah, and the local coyotes and cougars consider them snack food, too.
When I was younger, the cats we had in those days came and went pretty much as they pleased–indoors, outdoors, whatever they wanted, as long as it was within reason. (That is, when they came in at night, we didn’t let them out again until the next morning.) There were plenty of families in the neighbourhood that did the same, and all the neighbourhood cats had staked out their own territories among the backyards–interestingly, few of them ventured in front of the houses where the street was. Still, an “indoors only” cat was an odd thing back then.
But that was thirty or so years ago, and times have changed. As has been noted, there are those who seek to harm roaming cats, laws designed to prevent free-roaming cats, increased traffic (at least, it’s increased in the neighbourhoods I’ve lived in), and a host of other dangers.
When we got the first of the ones we have now, my wife, knowing I’d had outdoor cats in the past, asked if these could be indoor ones. I agreed.
Our guys seem comfortable indoors, and indeed, will run away from the door if we’re entering or leaving. They do enjoy watching what’s happening outside through the window, but they don’t seem to want to go out to explore it.
. . . Another factor which may or may not make a difference: are window screens as common in Europe as they are in the U.S.? I have friends in England who do not have screens on their windows, so when the cat or dog or whatever wants to leave, it just does.
By the way, our current kitty stays inside mostly because she thinks grass is icky. We have tried to take her out on a leash (boy, what fun looks you get from the neighbors for that!) and she wants no part of it. It is WET out there. And smells funny. And things make noise. None of that for her! She is an inside kitty by her preference. It is merely coincidence that we prefer her to be inside as well.
I grew up with indoor/ outdoor cats, and when I got my own house and cats I did the same. Two were killed by cars, one disappeard, one brought fleas home, and another came back with a broken pelvis.
Having my cats die is very hard on me, I don’t deal with it well.
For their safety and my peace of mind, they stay in. I have big windows they can look out of, and lots of bird feeders outside those windows.
My Papi is an indoor-only kitty. I’ve always had indoor-outdoor cats and never had to maintain a litter box. My last cat was killed by a stray that I was feeding. When I got Papi I decided no outdoors for herr. And although she’s had plenty of opportunity to jump out open windows or dart out doors, she doesn’t take it. She seems very content to be an indoor kitty. She rarely even looks out the window.
