Feh. I don’t care if people keep their pets indoors or not. As long as they shrug and say, “oh, well” when Kitty fails to come home. It ain’t my cat, I should lose any sleep.
Actually my cat does the beatings around town, he’ll get a few scratches here and there, but he holds his own. I usually remove the ticks he gets. Fleas? Never had em, maybe I guess, but never noticed. He gets worm control throughout the year from the vet. He always likes to go outside, even when young he would whine constantly to go out, it just go so unbearable, that we just decided to let him do his own thing. He always comes back, and after 13 years, he’s done well. Still healthy and fast. Your cat must be a pussy. :rolleyes:
Good for you. Cats also go around and destroy other people’s property. When I was little, I had a sandbox and even though it was covered at night, we STILL had problems with neighborhood cats using it as a litterbox.
My cats are all indoors, and VERY VERY happy.
lorinada Hey, thanks. I never even thought about the term Leukemia being confusing.
I adopted a cat who was the local ass kicker and impregnator of all the female cats. This tom was a tough bastard who fended for himself for years outside. However, it was obvious the years were taking their toll, so I took pity on him and brought him in to be my cat. He didn’t have fleas when I got him either, but guess what else he had?
FIV, caught from the bite of another cat during a fight. He won the battle but he lost the war. He lived with me for 6 years until his FIV turned into full blown AIDS, and my big, sweet, wonderful retired warrior wasted away by inches; he went blind, became incapacitated, and then I had to have him put to sleep. Broke my heart, made me mad, and none of my cats go outside.
The older they are, the slower they get. My best friend’s sister had an outdoor cat who was fine outside for 12 years until a car nailed him. Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t. If you can live with your cat going out like that, good for you. I can’t. And my cats are all former street urchins and tough cookies all. Cars are still tougher though. So a :rolleyes: right back atcha.
One of the outdoor cats we had was fine, never got bitten in a fight, and so on. He was not too bright, but was a great mouser. He would yowl unceasingly until we let him out. Then he got old, and got a thyroid condition that weakened him even though we dosed him up daily with a treatment that helped. So one day he went out and never came back. We figure he was no longer able to defend himself and some younger and stronger cat or other animal got to him. Had he been accustomed to an indoor life he would have lived a longer and probably happier life.
Our other one, who was the most wonderful and sweet cat we ever had, contracted feline leukemia (this was before the vaccine was available), probably from one of the many bites he got while traipsing around outdoors. Taking him to the vet to get the abscesses cleaned and drained was not too much fun, but the long and lingering illness was almost more than I could bear.
All our cats will be indoor cats from now on. Oh, and the feline leuk. and FIV vaccines, while they do improve the odds, are not 100% effective.