All of my cats died outside or from a skirmish that took place outside. If I ever own another cat, it’ll be indoors.
At the ranch, all of our cats are outside cats, barn kitties. We do have them spayed and neutered. Every single one of the ones that we have are strays that just showed up. They do fine.
erm here in the us until a few years ago discovery channel reran bbc shows like that ,
Reminds me of Six-Dinner Sid
actually, La county’s stance in the high desert and other regions is unless you catch it and take it in they do not pick up stray cats because they keep the rodent populations down
and even if you do take it in they just fix it and give it the bare minimum of shots it needs and then return it to petty much the exact same place it was trapped at …
Hey, thanks for reminding me of that book! I just went on-line and placed a hold with my library so I can read it to my granddaughter~I loved reading it to my daughter, her mother, and uncle. Great book!
We live in a very rural area on 15 acres in Ohio. We have four cats. They’re all outside cats. They’re not allowed in the house. Their main purpose is critter control.
I built them a large, heated cat house for the winter months. They love it.
My cat seems to be very happy indoors only, and the adoption agreement I signed said I’d keep her inside, although it isn’t like they check up on you. But since anytime I put my hand on the front door knob, put my shoes on, which sit by the front door, or even late a night take something out of my wallet, that sits in my bag, by the door, she runs upstairs and into the bedroom, I don’t think she’s too interested in getting out.
She does like to sit by the open window (with a screen) and listen to the birds, watch the chipmunks and squirrels, etc. but joining them outside, not so much. Her previous owners left their door open a lot for their dog, so I know she’s been outside, but clearly when she moved in with me, she wasn’t eager to go back out.
It’s not that TNR never works, it’s more that it very often does not. It’s apparently best suited to dealing with smaller, more isolated colonies. In a large urban area it just doesn’t turn over enough animals to be viable. New adults move in, kittens are missed and a new generation pops up. The larger the local feral population the harder it is for TNR to work - you need to have a truly high-intensity campaign that snags a very high percentage of the of the adult population and aggressively removes and adopts out all kittens. Check out the literature review here.