My cat has lived outdoors exclusively her whole life, and she’s almost 9 now. I’ve had to take her to the vet a couple of times for fight wounds, and she’s almost been hit by a car once, but she tends to stay right up around our house most of the time.
Maybe it’s inhumane, I don’t know, but if I didn’t own her, she’d be a stray or a statistic at a humane society, so it can’t be that bad. Lord knows she eats well enough. My dad keeps feeding her the tuna fish that would’ve been my lunch if I’d got to it first.
Whenever I get an indoor kitty, I plan on training it to walk outside on a lead, though.
I have a 17-year-old cat who goes outside to sun himself (he’s no threat to the bird population, believe me), a 5-year-old who howls at the door until some member of the family who is weaker-willed than I am lets him out (dammit), and a 2-year-old female Siamese who is supposed to be an exclusively indoor cat. We also have a second-story balcony on which we keep one litterbox and there is a cat door leading to it. The Siamese learned how to get out onto the outside of the balcony rail (it’s lined with horse fencing), then onto a shed roof, and then to the side yard. I secured the wire onto the railing so that she couldn’t get out onto the shed. She learned how to get out on the other side of the balcony, walk along the narrow ledge on the outside of the rail, and then get down. My next step will be to install netting from roof to rail.
We have a big dog in the back yard. Not only does he keep all potential kitty predators and rivals out, he also chases any birds and rodents away, so the cats could do no harm at all if they could be confined to the back yard (the big dog is afraid of all three of them, so there’s nothing to worry about there). Hmm. Harnesses and tethers may well be in our younger cats’ immediate futures.
Here’s my 7 year old indoor/outdoor cat. Poor chap can’t manage to catch anything, though his next door best friend is quite adept at it-and eats his prey as well.
Er, Gobear, the indoor cat/outdoor cat debate is one of those religious arguments that has proven to have no right or wrong answer. Therefore your absolute tone is out of place and rather insulting. One could equally well argue that coddling the cat is meeting the owner’s needs and that the cat would rather be outside taking its chances.
As for ‘the idea that keeping cats indoors is “inhumane” is moronic’ – ever watch a cat outside in a field fleering as it encounters new and interesting scents? Cats are sensory creatures – maybe they don’t have to be outside smelling new and interesting scents, chewing on grass, and watching birds fly, but they certainly enjoy it. (If you get right down to it, I’d probably be safer and live longer if I never left the house too, but you won’t talk me into it.)
As for a cat on a leash strangling itself, you really should know what you are talking about before you pontificate. A properly fit cat harness will support the cat and prevent it from strangling itself. Can a cat get in trouble out on a lead? Sure. But it’s not the dire inevitability posed by the OP, and it’s a risk that some of us cat owners choose to take in the belief that it improves the quality of our cat’s life.
You don’t like it? Fine. Don’t leave your cat on a lead. But don’t assume that makes you morally superior.
Oh, no doubt, but if you think an outdoor cat lives as long as as healthily as indoor cats, check the facts. And if cats do strangle on leads–another fact. But, hey, it’s your cat, not mine, and if yours gets hit by a car or is eaten by a dog, at least you can console yourself that he got to chase some birds.
You can’t see it on that photo because I’m a dunce at scanning but Babu is actually 20 lbs. of solid, muscular, extremely healthy (though neutered) catflesh. When he stands up, he comes to my hips practically.
Bit much on the back to carry him for long distances, though.
I just finished burying my neighbors cat who they insisted on thethering outside. They went on vacation leaving another neighbor to feed it and cage at night. Today they cat tried to get on the roof and ended up hanging himself. He was such a good loving cat. Love them back do not make them do things against their nature
That’s pretty sad, catbefriender. I used to put my cats out on a leash, but I stayed with them the whole time - it takes about five seconds for a cat to get themselves tangled up and strung up in a leash, I discovered. And yes, other cats and dogs aren’t very polite about leaving a leashed cat alone.
We have a cat-proofed back yard that they go out into now, and they love it. I’m still usually home when they go out, though - I don’t just kick them out and leave them out all day.
We take our cats out for walks untethered. But we stay by them – Hestia gets easily frightened by sounds and people she doesn’t know. Hermes is more tolerant, but one time he ran away from me and found himself literally cornered by a dog. I freed him from that, but ever since he’s been awfully wary about going out.
But no way would we ever leave our cats unsupervised and tethered outside. we not only have dogs – we have coyotes who would make a meal of them.
a long time ago, with other cats, we tried walking them on harness leashes. This didn’t work out well. The cats reacted as if the harnesses were Gravity Multipliers, and immediately sunk down to the ground as if heavy weights were on them. Take the harnesses off, and they were happy. We used to walk both cats untethered like that.
