Absolutely! I’m talking about my neighborhood. There are cats getting eaten all the time. It’s kinda horrifying for kids to come out in the morning and see the head of their pet cat on the neighbor’s lawn. That happened just week before last. But sometimes people refuse to keep their cats in at night and the inevitable happens. I feel sad for the cats.
The first two cats my wife & I adopted, about 30 years ago, were originally outside cats. We brought them in full time when one of them got sick, but they would always try to get out whenever anyone opened the door. The current crew have always been inside cats and don’t seem to have much interest in trying to escape. Still, there is an outside cat on our street who has been there for several years; he seems well fed and groomed so I suppose he has an “owner”… or several…!
I’m always warning people to keep their cats indoors during coyote mating season here, late January through March. The coyotes are particularly aggressive during that period.
Nice couple of posts, tree!
We had three feral rescues who made the transition nicely. They do like to watch birds through the windows, however.
And yes, the fact that a particular outdoor cat may have had a long life does not change the fact that indoor cats live longer.
https://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk491/files/inline-files/Cats-Indoors_or_Outdoors.pdf
Statistics show that indoor cats lead longer, healthier lives than outdoor
cats. Indoor cats live on average 10-15 years, while outdoor cats live on average 2-5 years This handout is
intended to help you sort out the pros and cons associated with each lifestyle so you can rest assured your cat
will have both an enriched life and protection from environmental hazards.
Following are some of the reasons for and against choosing to keep your cat indoors:
Here are some reasons to keep your cat inside:
1. Be hit by vehicles
2. Become injured from other cats, or attacked by other dogs or predators
3. Contract deadly infectious diseases from other cats
4. Get lost and/or picked up by Animal Control
5. Poisoned by toxins, such as antifreeze or rat bait
6. Contract parasites, such as fleas and ticks (and the diseases they can carry)
7. Contact with environmental hazards, such as foxtails or other objects
8. Hunt native wildlife, some of them species of conservation concern
9. Unhappy neighbors may try to trap cats found littering their yards
10. Theft, injury, or death from people with cruel intentions…2. Cats are not completely domesticated and love the outdoors, fresh air and sunshine of their natural
environment.
Many indoor cats get just as much enjoyment from sitting on a windowsill, smelling the breeze and chattering
at the birds. In fact, one study shows that cats use windows and sunlight less than many owners expect. …After weighing the costs and benefits of having and indoor or outdoor cat, we recommend keeping your cat
indoors for your pet’s health and safety. As discussed above, there are numerous hazards your cat may
encounter while roaming unsupervised outside. If you think your cat is bored indoors, there are many ways to
enrich his/her environment and give your cat a fulfilled life.
I could understand this, if someone lives on a farm. It’s different, when the area is highly developed, and every square meter belongs to someone’s carefully tended garden.
I really do not appreciate cats crapping in my planting bed outside my living room window, nor do I like them killing the songbirds which were nesting just 5 meters from my back door.
Cat owners should be just as responsible for their cats as dog owners are responsible for dogs. In my area that means picking up the animal crap and keeping it leashed. Unfortunately this only applies to dogs, so far.
That’s awfully low for the indoor cats. My indoor/outdoors live longer than their indoor average.
And that average for outdoor cats almost certainly includes uncared for ferals and semiferals. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an article of that sort which tries to sort out cats who are well fed, inside at night or in bad weather, vaccinated, and otherwise taken to the vet. when necessary.
This, I agree with. However, when you have a cat who is quite used to catching mice in the field and you bring the cat to a place where there are no real mice to catch and eat, you get mischief and a cat who constantly tries to get outside to go mouse hunting.
My shelter is pretty firm on cats being indoor-only with the exception of feral cats adopted as barn cats (i.e. cats who were trapped wild, are not friendly, and would likely never be adopted). But… like half the staff plus, including the director, had at least one friendly pet cat who was at least indoor/outdoor. With varying reasons, risk levels, and outcomes. There have definitely been a greater-than-average number who have fallen victim to some kind of misfortune that wouldn’t have happened if they had been kept inside.
My childhood cat was indoor/outdoor and he was happy, healthy, street-wise, and, as far as I was aware, beloved by the whole neighborhood. My mom’s current young cat is also indoor/outdoor and she’s a constant source of conflict with the neighbors. She stalks people’s birdfeeders and she hates other cats, so she’ll fight noisily with any she encounters and will go to people’s windows to antagonize their indoor cats. She’s also wary of strangers, so she doesn’t make up for her delinquent behavior by winning people over with her cuteness and sweetness (although she is very cute and sweet with people she knows). I know some who go outside, but really do never leave the yard and others who pop by their home every few days or so.
Anyway- I would agree that it’s generally not a good idea and it’s safer if they’re inside. It’s not something I would do for my own cats. And if you have an inside/outside pet cat who isn’t spayed or neutered, you suck very much. But tbh, I’m not fully in agreement with the idea of not allowing a shelter cat to be adopted to an indoor/outdoor home. I’ve seen too many cats rot in the shelter for years for want of the perfect home and I’d rather know they were happy and loved and had an interesting, stimulating life for two years before being hit by a car than see them grow old and die without ever having a family.
Thank you for the detailed information on the risks to outside cats. I have limited cat experience, growing up in a dog-household and later in life being mostly a lizard/snake owner (great pets for small apartments!). About 4 years ago, my wife (who has always talked about having a cat as well) brought home a late gen Savanah cat who had terrified her prior 2 owner’s other cats. And of course, once you have one cat, you inevitably end up with another, in this case an adoption with largish cash deposit of a gorgeous Bengal (prior owner moving to smaller place), as we needed an active cat to stand up to and survive the grumpy Savannah.
We have a good sized house, and lots of space for them to run crazy, but it wasn’t enough especially for the Bengal. For about a year we took him for weekly walks on a leash in our neighborhood, but it isn’t ideal in Colorado where the weather can be either too hot or cold for months (normally cold, but with the recent weather trends…).
So last year we completely fenced in our 14x16 wooden deck with 1.5"x2" plastic coated wire and built a large number of cat structures to play on. When weather allows they get several hours a day to go out and play on the catio, and we often join them. It seems to be a good compromise - but while we did all the work ourselves, it does presuppose having a house and several hundred dollars in materials.
And I’m not sure I could have stood the emotional risk for an outside cat. My wife was nearly sobbing over a local cat that had a dozen ‘missing cat’ posters all over our neighborhood last year. It literally had everyone on the local association email checking under every porch, deck and the like to no avail. [ we had lost all hope, but in the last month animal services raided and confiscated 30 (!) cats from a cat hoarder nearby, many of whom were believed to be ‘found’ local cats, so everyone is crossing fingers that Lola is amongst them ]
Yeah, I’ve seen that figure for outdoor cats trotted out for decades now but have never seen specifics. Are they outdoor-only? Feral? What? Simply reposting the same thing over and over again doesn’t make it real.
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.
All the cats I have known, with two exceptions, were house cats that could go outside freely. We used to live on a busy road, and two cats died young, but the others all lived to be about ten or more. The two house cats that I knew lived to about ten.
Feral strays definitely do not live long, sometimes only two or three years
The house cats were happy to stay at home, but both of them were psychologically maladjusted as they did not get along and one of them was bullied mercilessly. Most cats like to have an open area to roam, some reports indicate that the size of territory varies from maybe a mile to double or triple that. Our current cats seem to stay with a few hundred yards of the house and go in and out relatively often. Usually they come in at night with no problems. Once indoors, they often like to watch through the window.
Ticks and fleas? Yup, we have to check them over. They also get flea collars or Spot-On. Fleas seem to be more of a problem for kittens.
I call what the OP calls outside cats i/o cats (indoor/outdoor), though the shelters and vets make no distinction between i/o cats and outdoors cats.
Yes it’s true that an indoor cat will generally live longer then a i/o however I believe I’ve observed that a i/o cat has a better quality of life then an indoor cat. (over my life I’ve had 4 indoor cats and 5 i/o cats, so I’ve seen it both ways). I’ve also sensed a desire for the cats to go outside from every cat I’ve had. My indoor cats lived in the range of 14-17 years, my i-o cats have lived from 12-21 years, with one run disappeared MIA assumed dead cat - which is the 12 yr)
For my last cat I put in a cat door so she can come and go as she pleased which seemed to make her very happy. Putting in this door came as a result of a conversation with my vet who is against letting cats out (not being allowed out would have devastated this cat). His only valid argument is if my cat needed to get in and I was not around to do it it would not be right/fair. It would be akin to not allowing my child in.
First I never considered my pet as my child, she is my companion animal and very much an adult for her species. She is capable of making her own decisions and overruling her needs to be done with respect for who she is, so rare and for a specific reason. But secondly yes when I came back I admitted to the vet that his point is valid, it would not be right for her not to be able to come in when she needed or wanted, so I put in a cat door for her. The vet just shook his head and said ‘your so bad’.
Regardless of how it affects the longevity of the cat, outdoor cats are an environmental disaster. They are the largest source of bird predation in the US, have driven dozens and dozens of species extinct, and are a major reason if not the major reason for the significant decline in bird population over the last decades.
Feral and semi-feral cats often don’t survive their first year, which brings down the average. The ones who make it through the first year have learned to avoid cars and not to sleep in the wrong spots in farm machinery, have learned about dogs and coyote and being stepped on by a cow, have managed to stay in or to find territory that provides shelter, food, and water, and have probably developed resistance to some of the local diseases. This selection from the original population may live for quite some time – the 20+ cat I knew as a child moved herself into the house from the barns at about age 16 – but they’re vulnerable to dying from an injury or infection that a cared-for cat’s likely to survive with little trouble, because when they retreat to a hiding place when they’re not feeling up to par there isn’t anyone to bring them food and water until they’re up to hunting again, let alone to root them out of there and take them to the vet.
I think this is generally a factually true statement.
Most cat GPS maps I have seen, such as the one below, bear this out. Though some roam a bit more.
But outside is outside, it doesn’t matter how far from home they are.
Cite?
Has there been an increase in outdoor cats over that time? Seems to me that it’s become a whole lot more common over the last decades to keep cats inside. – as near as I can tell with a fast search, there’s nothing remotely resembling clear numbers for how many there are now in most areas, let alone for how many there were 50 or 100 years ago. Estimates for the USA vary wildly.
What else there’s been a whole lot of over the last decades is habitat destruction. Let’s try getting rid of monoculture and close-mowed lawns and reducing hedgerow-less monoculture agriculture.
Yeah, that’s the danger season. Someone posted on our NextDoor about finding a dead coyote pup this time instead of a kitty. Sad, but I’m willing to take that trade-off.
I had two indoor/outdoor cats (Maryland suburb north of D.C.). On separate occasions, they went out and never came back. Before that their behavior had been very regular and predictable and they never went very far, so I suspected catnapping or accidents. Since then my cats have been indoor-only.