As mentioned, US houses usually have screens on the windows. Not that a determined cat can’t claw through a screen, but none of mine ever tried.
The cats I had when I was growing up rarely tried to get out. We’d had them since kittenhood and I guess they were just used to it. The cat I adopted as an adult had obviously been outdoors. She did try to make a break for it on many occassions. I just had to be careful about opening the door. And on the rare occassions she did manage to get out, I could catch her pretty quickly.
Regardless of the fact that my cat did try to get out, I don’t think she was all that unhappy as an indoor cat. It’s not like she would cry at the door or anything.
Ah, see, I didn’t know that your new home was so large FCM. In that case your cat will definitely be quite happy to stay indoors. My house is very small - the backyard is bigger the the house itself - so it’s always been better for my cats to be able to roam back there. But I see that your new abode will be well over 3x [!!!] the size of my house, so your cat should love it, and you will have peace of mind.
You’ve made the right decision. Good luck + congrats with the new place!
That’s simply not the case. A cat who is ALWAYS kept indoors, from kittenhood, will usually shy away from going outside. Ours won’t go outside even when called; they aren’t used to it, so it frightens them.
And on the rare occasions when they see something they want to chase - I mean, it’s not real hard for a human to outsmart an animal with a brain smaller than a golf ball. You just shoo them away. If I make a “Sssss!” sound at my cats they run like their tails are on fire.
Windows here always have screens on them to keep insects out. Unless Kitty has learned to phase through normal matter like Shadowcat, they ain’t going out the windows.
Doors? See my comment about outsmarting an animal that is really not all that bright.
I’m not presuming to know more about your area than you do, but you’d be surprised the size and variety of wildlife than can live almost invisibly even in teeming urban areas. For example, coyotes have been spotted in dowtown Toronto. Granted, we have lots of green space and a vast, interlinked ravine system but animals have learned to live among humans almost undetected. You probably have racoons, even if you’ve never seen one. A racoon can kill a cat with very little effort, or injure it severely, infect it with rabies and so on.
Fenced dogs get loose with alarming regularity, also. Just sayin’, is all.
As for the “how do we keep them in” question, my cat (who has always been an indoor cat and has never gone outside) often bolts for the door when we open it. Fortunately, we live in an apartment, so if he gets anywhere, it’s usually the second floor; but we kind of have to make sure the front doors are closed before we open our own. He’s doing it less often nowadays.
My roommate’s cat has escaped twice; the second time she came back preggers. (She is now spayed. The kitten was stillborn. :()
Growing up I always had indoor/outdoor cats. And while they;d come back with fight wounds, I could drain abcesses, etc. However, my last bat but one was an indoor/outdoor cat (although she’s wait outside all day before coming in to use her litterbox!). I lived on the last house on a dead-end street. Big pasture on one side. Things went along fine for years, never went missing (except for the time I shut her up in the spare bedroom, then spent two days looking for her outside. She never made a sound), never ticked off the neighbors. Never seemed to leave my yard (always right there when I drove up after work). Then one 4th of July I got up and she was lying dead in the yard. A dog, a stray I’d been feeding, had killed her. My new cat is indoor only and has no desire to go outside. Just a week ago I adopted a kitten outside of Wal-mart that’s intended to be a barn cat. But I find it’s hard to let him outside. At my new farm I have coyotes and bobcats roaming around, as well as my dogs and the neighborhood dogs. I guess I have to be more hard0-hearted when it comes to working animals.
I can understand all the cons to letting your cat out, BUT my cat would be terribly depressed if she couldn’t go out. She loves being outside and gets really bored inside. She stays in the yard and always comes in right away when I call her. She hasn’t had any fleas or ticks in years. She has never been injured. I just couldn’t bear the thought of not letting her out. She is an animal, a hunter and an explorer. She is a free creature and I love her to death, and she really really loves going out. I could never take that away from her, even if there is a risk. I would feel like I was imprisoning her, and I couldn’t do that to my baby.
For my apartment, with access to a flat roof, I’ve found a glazier who was willing to install a catflap in my window. It is a window that only tilts, not opens. behind it, I’ve built a wire enclosure that allows my cat to feel the sun, wind and rain, smell the smells, eat grass from the pots I’ve put up there, etc.
I’ve got another big window that I love to open in hot days, to let the wind blow through my house. For that window, I’ve threaded rows of bamboosticks with rope and pieces of tube (to keep them apart), and I fasten this “hanging fence” against my windowsill on hot days. Works very well.
Seems weird to me that so much people have lost indoor/outdoor cats. Reading this thread it seems like 90% of outdoor cats die in short orders.
My grandmother and my parents had indoor/outdoor cats. Both in a city subburbs and in countryside. Only one went missing over the course of many years. And it was an old cat. It was probably be killed by something, but I’m not sure why it’s a worst fate than dying of old age and illness, for instance. Occasionnally, one of these cat wouldn’t show up for a day, a couple days, or even once for a week or so (the same which went missing later). They always found the way back home. So, I don’t think that them getting lost, for instance is a real risk.
Anyway, I’ve always found very unatural to keep animal strictly indoors. I just don’t like that. Not a reasonned argument, though.
My parents had indoor/outdoor cats when I was growing up. Out of 7 cats, one survived for about 10 years, one for about 2 years and the rest disappeared in less than a year (2 of them in less than a month). It’s entirely possible that someone took them in and made them indoor cats, but it’s just as possible that they were hit by cars or killed by wild animals (I’ve seen foxes, HUGE raccoons and a nasty possum by my parents house…and two surrounding towns have had cougar sightings in the past year) or other roaming pets.
My current cat is strictly indoors. He doesn’t try to get outdoors for the most part, although he will follow me onto the balcony if I leave the door open behind me, and he’ll try to go after the occasional visiting raccoon (who’s bigger than he is!).
Here, add three to the other column. Halfie, Mocha and Lady are indoor/outdoor cats who are all thirteen years old. They were “outdoor” cats when they were born, and as a few people have said, strictly indoor cats are much easier to manage if they’re always been indoor cats. These three make a mad dash for freedom if they’ve been inside for more than 72 hours straight (unless it’s winter. the house would have to be on fire before they’d go outside willingly in the winter) so letting them out on a regular basis is a better alternative, since they don’t tend to “hide” once they’re outside if they know they can go in and out as they please. They play outside for about 1/2 hour at a time, 2-3 times a day, and they’re pretty happy.
If your cat gets bored being inside buy more engaging toys, even better get another cat to keep him or her company. Letting your cat out to get hurt, sick, contribute to overpopulation, or devastate our dwindling songbird population is just wrong.
Back when I was growing up it was never even a question whether our cats would be indoor/outdoor. Out of about fifteen or so I remember only two who lived long full lives. My cat Cali who just never went far, and Blackie who was the baddest cat I have ever known. Blackie was a country stray who looked like a panther that’d been slightly shrunk in the wash. I saw him face down a coyote one morning he was so tough, but he paid for it by all the horrible absessed bite wounds, a torn ear, broken claws, etc. The only reason he lived to old age is because he settled down radically in his last years, becoming a defacto indoor kitty, the ol’ poot.
So that’s thirteen gone not long after reaching adulthood and only two who made it. Those are not odds this responsible pet owner is willing to accept.
Shall we count how many ways I sound obnoxious in my post? Please to insert the appropriate smiley wherever necessary to make me sound less self-congratulatory and judgmental, thanks. Sheesh!
We have two cats, and they’re strictly “outdoor only.” But in our case they have a job to do (kill rodents) so I look at them more as tools than pets. But even if they were classified as the latter, I’d still keep them outdoor: indoor cats make a house stink. (I can instantly tell if a home has an indoor cat the second I walk through the front door.)
Poor Boo Boo Kitty would go poop or pee on my bed if I didn’t let her out. Not only would she get depressed, she’d get mad! So one morning, I let her out as usual. When I came home for lunch, she wasn’t around to greet me, which was unusual. When I came home after work… still no Boo Kitty.
So the dog and I take a walk, looking for her. Usually, when I called out, she’d come crashing out of some bushes and happily walk me home, with her tail jauntily swaying up in the air. After the walk, and still no Boo Kitty, I noticed a message flashing on my machine. I pressed play.
And discovered that Boo Kitty had been brutallly murdered. Not by stray dogs, or coyotes or mountain lions or a car… but by the neighbor dogs. We had some irresponsible dog owners in our neighborhood who would simply get out of bed, open their doors and let their dogs out, instead of walking them properly. These were friendly, tamed house dogs who knew Boo Kitty and often accompanied her on her daily walks along the golf course.
They cornered her to “play” and grabbed her by the neck and shook their heads hard, like dogs do when playing with furry screaming chewy toys. They snapped Boo Kitty’s neck.
Now who’s the one who was depressed? I don’t care if you feel you’re imprisoning your cat. You are doing an incredible disservice to a cat to let it out, is all I’m saying. That’s like saying, "My three year old gets depressed and angry if I don’t let her play in traffic. It’s natural for kids to want to play in traffic. I don’t want to keep my kid in the house because I feel like I’m imprisoning her.
Sometimes we have to make choices that our animals are not happy about, but the choice is in their best interests.
Think that one over. And go bring your damn cat in, please. In honor of Boo Boo Kitty.
My vote is to keep the kitty indoors. My vet told me that indoor only cats live an average of three times longer than indoor/outdoor cats. Mostly because outdoors they are exposed to other (carnivorous and/or vicious) animals, pests carrying diseases, poisonous plants and nasty people. And since he is already used to it, he won’t be at all unhappy with the situation. It is what he is used to, after all, and he is perfectly happy right now. He’ll stay that way.
If you start letting him out, though, you will be committed to keeping things that way. Once they start roaming, they get used to it and feel confined if they aren’t ALLOWED to roam.
Locally where I live (St Louis area), lots of farmers/horse-owning people have cats and big dogs around out on the farm. The reason for the cats is to drive off rats and mice, which will otherwise infest the outbuildings (-especially where feed is stored or dispensed). The reason for the large dogs is to keep the foxes and coyotes at a distance, because otherwise the foxes and coyotes will come in and catch and eat the cats. Cats that wander far from the house don’t live long.
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Yes. Cats aren’t a part of the natural environment where you live and they are very destructive. Every two days as many birds are killed in Britain by cats as were killed by the Exxon Valdez (sp?). I’ve had several roomates with cats, and we, the cats and I, that is, have always gotten along famously. I may joke to the contrary, but the truth is that I love those evil, little killing machines. But that’s no reason to release a pox on your local environment. Keep it indoors.
Heck, I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and coyotes come into my neighborhood for easy meals. The river bottoms area of the Mississippi is a nice alley for the local wildlife.
There’s also the one sided racoon/cat fights too. Vicious buggers those racoons.
There’s also the rabies those racoons often carry.
There’s also the rampant FIV in the area.
There’s also the a-hole dog fight trainers that snatch the cats up for a doggie treats.
There’s also the disdain of the neighbors as pweddy widdle kitty ravages the local songbird population (bells on collars are worthless folks)
There’s also the disdain of the neighbors as pweddy widdle kitty poops in their children’s sandboxes.
There’s also the local feral cats that will pummell a nice domesticated cat.
There’s also traffic.
There’s also Animal Control Officers.
There’s also laws.
There’s also being a responsible pet owner.
Or…
You can choose to keep your pet ‘happy’ as it’s attacked, infected, detained, ingested, reported, trapped, maimed, crippled, and impregnated.