Should I let our cat be an indoor/outdoor cat?

In My Humble Opinion
61

FWIW some neighbors here calmly admitted to it–and they have (indoor) cats of their own. I was sickened, furious and just plain stunned. They’re well educated, articulate, friendly and rather gregarious, social types in the neighborhood. And they’ve calmly been putting out dishes of antifreeze to kill any roaming animals, wildlife and pets included. They were the most calm, matter-of-fact, reasonable animal killers you could ever imagine. Their beloved cats were pets. Any others on their property were vermin to be exterminated. The absolute last people one would ever suspect of that kind of mental and emotional disconnect. Mind boggling.
Needless to say I can’t bear to even look at them any more. (Which isn’t a huge problem, as I’m the hermit of the neighborhood.) I did advise several of my close neighbors whose cats have gone missing. I don’t like roaming cats using my gardens as litter boxes and killing wildlife but I’d never dream of harming one. Needless to say it caused quite a furor. They finally stopped, but only after utterly clueless defensive outrage.
I’m not an absolutist on either side of this. Perhaps I’m just echoing the latest outsider’s impression but I just finished Rita Mae Brown’s latest “Sneaky Pie” mystery. (Yeah, yeah, fluff reading. I was desperate.) She’s very specific about animal care though. She lets her cats roam freely in a rural area, but keeps them on a strict weekly regime against health risks. (Hell, she doses foxes and possums!) But it’s a good insight into the kind of care needed to protect roaming cats against even non-human related perils outside. If you’re gonna let 'em roam you owe them care the risks demand. Choose at will.

Veb

62

Another Sneaky Pie fan! I just finished Tale of the Tip Off and Whisker of Evil myself. I started re-reading the whole series, I love those books. I think they are good, but a lot of it is fantasy - I mean, she fox hunts, but you rarely read about her keeping those fox hunters in shape. And Mrs. Murphy is an extraordinary cat.

63

We had our cat Callie put to sleep earlier this year. She was 20 years old and had been an indoor/outdoor cat her whole life. I live in a largish town with fairly regular traffic and Callie used to look both ways before she crossed the street. She never got injured or trapped or anything, and the only time she ever got lost was right after we moved into our new house (same town) and she got lost for a couple of days. After that she rarely wandered out of sight of the house. We regularly used Advantage on her and fleas and ticks were never a problem.

But, like it’s been said before, it depends on the cat. Our current cat Cookie is a big wanderer and we’ve had to bail her out of the pound at least 3 times.