Outside Cats

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I grew up with Outside cats, They would spend a lot time inside too, but they kinda came and went as they pleased. And i thought that was normal.

Fast forward a couple decades, wife brings home a couple of kittens from the shelter, and i got a whole explanation of why Outside cats are a horrible idea. And i agreed with her, so now I’m a Inside cat person. The Cat whisperer reality show is very much anti- Outside cat. Seems to be the trend.

But i still see Outside cats, not feral cats, they obviously belong to someone.

2

All of my cats have been outsiders. It seems more common in suburban areas.
If it means anything, I see far fewer dead cats in or along roads than I once did (say twenty years ago).

3

When we got our felines from local rescue groups, we had to agree to keep them indoors, but I had no problem with that. I always know where they are (more or less) and I don’t have to worry about ticks and fleas and love offerings of dead birds or whatever.

Our younger cat doesn’t care - she never acts like she wants to go out. The older one has slipped out a few times, but he’ll go about 30 feet from the house, lie down, and yowl till someone picks him up and brings him in. He’s got issues. But he doesn’t have fleas…

4

I have had only one cat in my adult life. His name was St. George, a rescue, who was eyeball-estimated as part Burmese by our vet. He certainly acquired his voice from somewhere! He moved with me numerous times, from house to house.

He started as an outside kitten. We lived in a cottage at the back of the landlords’ garden. The landlord had two large dogs, Alsatian crosses. My cat put them in their place from day one, and was the boss of that back-yard.

I moved to a different city when he was 2 years old. This time, the landlady had her own cat, and two very large dogs. He started there as an outside cat, but in an unfortunate incident while attending to cat business* he became nervous of those dogs, and became an indoor cat. He remained an indoor cat until I moved cities again, and, having no permanent home, moved in with a friend of a friend in an apartment block on the 5th floor. I shuddered when I spotted him casually walking along the balcony railing with such a big drop below, but he became a multi-story flat-cat. He worked out how to get from our balcony to the neighbour’s (obviously, we tried very hard to prevent access, but this is a cat, after all) then out their window and down the stairs to the flat directly below, where he was warmly welcomed.

I then moved to a small ground floor flat. He wanted to be an indoor cat for about a year. Then he discovered the neighbours, and was an outdoor cat for another 6 months. Treats were probably involved.

I then moved in with my girlfriend, soon to be wife, and from the start he was a street cat (there was no way to keep him in, and it was a quiet street.) He spent the day with the neighbours across the street who worked from home, and evening to morning at his real house.

Finally, we bought a house. He had his own garden and plenty of space, but he decided he was an indoor cat again. Then I got a dog. Suddenly St. George took notice of the outside and once again, became lord of all he surveyed. The dog was utterly subservient.

So, at least anecdotally, cats can choose either lifestyle and be perfectly happy.

* the unfortunate incident: St. George was in that indelicate position of defecation under a bush, when the landlady arrived home. Her two dogs burst around the corner, eager to welcome her - straight towards my poor cat. He freaked out, they ignored him, and ran on, but he bolted straight up a large tree. He then used his sizable Burmese voice to inform me how unhappy he was. So I got a ladder, too short for the job and scaled the tree, branch by branch until I was within an arms length of the cat. I reached up with my right hand into a fork of the tree… to find that the turd that he had had interrupted on the ground had been completed in arboreal format.

5

Inside only cats live about twice as long.

Also they don’t decimate the environment, killing off songbirds, lizards and what not.

Cats do not need a large area. They do not need to go outside, nor are they happier.

A window where they can watch birds is a nice thing, however.

6

I spent a whole summer trying to harness train my Siamese cats. They seemed to want to be outside.

I couldn’t let them. I had paid way too much money for them (shhhh! It’s a secret).
Being purebred hothouse bred and born I didn’t want them free wheelin’ it. Too many predators in my neck of the woods.
They’d have lasted, oh I don’t know…33 minutes. Maybe.

They now will step out on the deck and plant their butts on the welcome mat. Any noise or occurrence causes them to fly in the door.
They seem happy with his arrangement.

7

Depends a whole lot on where you live.

My indoor/outdoor cats nearly always live to between 16 and 20. And I have had cats so insistent on getting out that, in this household, sooner or later they’ll manage it.

Plus which, in this location, there will be outdoor cats: if the territory’s not claimed, somebody will move in. And that somebody may well be feral, uncatchable, pregnant, and vulnerable to diseases, possibly including rabies, that I couldn’t vaccinate them against.

8

In my neighborhood, outdoor cats are usually found in pieces. One recently had only a tail left behind.

When there are coyotes about you’re going to lose a lot of cats. If there is a large enough feral population like in thorny_locust’s location, you can lose a bunch and still have leftovers.

9

Ditto. Except not nearly always, but always. I think I’m on my 14th permanent cat now.

10

I give you Isaac Newton’s greatest invention: the cat flap.

11

Yup, the cats we had when I was growing up were all indoor-outdoor-wherever-they-please-door cats. The last three lived to be 18, 20, and 22.

Mom now has a purely outdoor cat who’s around 12 and still going strong. She’ll occasionally step inside the door in the summer to complain about the deplorable lack of petting she’s getting, but she absolutely panicks if the door is shut behind her.

Some cats absolutely can be perfectly happy as purely indoor cats. Not all.

12

Well, the one who died of his vaccinations only made it to 12.

(That’s not an argument against vaccinating; it’s a rare result, he might have died younger if he hadn’t been vaccinated, and they’ve improved the vaccine since.)

I shut mine in at night. And I’m not “losing a bunch”. See above.

In some locations, of course, coyotes don’t have as much else to eat. Again, location matters.

13

Our first cat Fluffernutter (my 3 year old daughter named him) was outdoors all the time, would disappear for months at a time, return. He lived to 18.5 years of age, had many adventures summarized here before dying of kidney failure. He avoided local predators seemingly without difficulty, though his actions around us seemed suicidal at times.

Our current cat Wowbagger is outdoor/indoor. That translates into about 1-12 hours outdoors, depending on HIS mood. Winters make him all about “nope, I’ll stay in today”, while in summer he frequently refuses to come inside for the night. He’s 12 now, predator of baby squirrels (they overrun and infest our home), which he gifts to us. He’s slow and fat now, and seems to lost his desire to hunt successfully. He’s grumpy enough to discourage local feral cats from claiming his territory. He only leaves our local neighborhood when he accompanies us on walks, and it’s amazing that he’ll trek thru the woods and beach for a mile or so and keeps up.

14

Sorry Doc, you do not get to speak for all cats. Mind you, most of my cats have been inside cats but my pal Helmut von Helmet and the kitty he came along with to me were definitely outside cats.

A friend in a very small community was looking to rehome a couple of strays he had adopted because he, my friend, was dying. I volunteered to take them as I was looking for cats. I did not know what I was getting into. To make a long story short, these were outside cats. The first, though she spent much of the day sitting in his trailer home, managed to escape capture. The second, about 7 years old, was caught. He also managed to catch a kitten who was about 5-1/2 to 6 months old. But the kitten’s mother was too wily for him. So I took these two.

However, the 7 y.o. hated, hated, hated captivity. And while I was at work, and the painters were in my new-to-me condo, she escaped by jumping to the open top of a sash window (opened by the painters, not me), getting herself between the rotting screen and the glass. As she climbed her way down, the cheap, old, nylon gave way and she was out. Never to be seen again, though friends and neighbors helped me try and try to find her.

The kitten impressed on me and was most affectionate, but he clearly also yearned for the great outdoors. He was very cute, active, and inventive and constantly trying to get outside. I knew he had already learned to capture mice, but not birds, from my friend. To shorten the story, I’ll cut to the fact that my queen kitty hated his guts. Hated. He hated being trapped inside. So I did what I thought was best and found a family who wanted a cat, had lots of mice in their extra large yard, and were planning to move to a small farm as soon as they found the right one. I vetted the family, and they adopted Helmut from me. He is now on a 12-acre hobby farm, with a best friend 5-y.o. boy and they explore outside together. They family adore him. He clearly adores them. He is fixed and comes in at night. I have pics.

15

I’ve had many cats over the decades, and all have been indoors-only.

One of my cats escaped outside when he was nearly 20. The door had been left open and he simply walked out. He was gone almost three weeks, and found miles away, malnourished and dehydrated, but otherwise healthy.

16

Your background doesn’t matter, we’re talking about the cats.

I do think there are more predators around in many places, even cities, than there were once upon a time. In Boston, coyotes are known to exist, and I wouldn’t let Sally roam the neighborhood after dusk, which in the past I wouldn’t have given a second thought to. (Sally=cat)

My friend Ann, who lives on Mission Hill (Roxbury) has made real progress with a neighborhood feral whom she calls Blaze. He has the most amazing sideburns - looks like Pres. Martin Van Buren. She feeds him daily, and he has warmed up to her in a way most ferals don’t. Will this love story have a happy ending?

17

Ok, well yes, a cat who was outside for years will not always take well to being a inside cat. True. But that was not a inside cat.

But what I meant if you raise a cat inside, they are content with being inside.

18

I let my cat out in the fenced yard, during the day, with supervision. It makes him very happy indeed.

19

When i was an Outside cat person, we never lost a cat to predators or cars. So i understand the responses, that say “Well i have Outside cats, and it’s never been a problem”

But my transition to Inside cat person somewhat follows this logic…“Not all smokers drop dead at 50 from lung cancer, but smoking is still a bad idea”

If you have an Outside cat, turning it into an Inside cat probably would be problematic, and I’m not suggesting you need to do it.

But if you get a new get a new cat, raising it as an Inside cat, my be a good idea.

There is a downside to being an Indoor cat person. The concept of the litter box was foreign to me. Our Outside cats just did their business outside. Litter box chores aren’t my favorite thing.

20

And despite being raised from kittenhood as Inside cats, they are pretty good mousers. Despite my best efforts at pest control, we always seem to get mice in the fall. My cats are on the job though.