It is not the whole nation, but it is the prevailing recommendation of Vets in the Urban and Suburban areas. Americans in Rural areas are far more likely to agree with you.
My cats don’t mind much staying in. The one never ventures outside at all. The older cat only goes out for a short time and short distance. The average lifespan of indoor cats vs indoor/outdoor cats is fairly dramatic. This alone is a good reason to show a little respect for a point of view that differs from your own.
Mostly what I see in this thread is a lot of people that seem convinced that their way is the only right way.
I’ll say it again, feeding wild/feral animals in an urban or suburban environment encourages them to migrate and proliferate. With natural scroungers like urban birds or squirrels this isn’t such a problem because they’d be around anyway; other forms of wildlife like raccoons, rabbits, coyotes, feral cats, et cetera, create multiple problems including damage to crops/gardens and property, public health nuisences to both humans and domestic animals, and luring high level predators like mountain lions or foxes into residential areas where they are both a threat to people and in danger of being injured themselves in being hit by a car or taken for a public threat. For a coyote, a clowder of cats is dinner time. This is fine and expected on a farm, where you’re encroaching on the natural habitat of wildlife anyway, but poses serious problems in a suburban environ. The old woman with the house crawling with dozens of feral cats is a serious public health hazard.
If you choose to let you cats roam around outside in a populated neighborhood, or feed wild animals you pose a problem for your neighbors that these animals will also beg/forage/vandalize their property for sustinance, and animals like coyotes will lose their native fear of humans, leading to increased contact with something that looks domestic but reacts like a wild animal. This is simply a bad idea for everyone involved.
Cats that are provided adequate stimulation and sufficient space are not “cooped up” inside. Unlike dogs (most brees of which require regular exercise) cats to not need to run and do not have herding or working instincts that require open spaces. Domestic cats that are allowed to roam free will defecate and damage other property by their nature of marking territory; this creates a public nuisance and a potential health hazard, as many posters have previously demonstrated. It’s become an accepted wisdom that one does not allow a dog to roam freely about the neighborhood in suburban areas lest they pose a hazard to others and a danger of being injured by a car; why cats should be any different I cannot conceive. I’m not clear what about this you find “totally amazing and throughly[/sic] depressing,” but in fact pet cats do not need to roam a neighborhood.
You describe a real concern; however, you are describing a real concern from a Westerner’s perspective. In the heavily populated East, especially along the so-called Route 95 corridor, we have no real issues with coyotes, mountain lions, bears or other large predators. They are extremely rare. Raccoons are fully integrated already into the suburban landscape. Foxes are rare as are wild dogs thankfully.
I described a situation in the apartments I use to live in where the clowder of cats made living where we were far better. The other alternative would have been the need for lots of rodent traps and poison. The cats worked better, made a few of the retired residents happy and caused no complaints. This is an example of how there are many exceptions to what you say.
I mentioned I already have a large wildlife population in my yard and I did in my last house. I live in a suburban but I suppose it could be argued a rural-suburban location. I do not feed any of the animals, but I have no objection to the 1 or 2 cats that roam around and visit my yard occasionally. I do have a big problem with the groundhogs that want to live under my house.
Your pest is no more of a nuisance to me than the squirrels all over my yard or the deer. That is to say no nuisance at all.
I used to feel that allowing cats outdoors was the perfectly normal, acceptable way of keeping pet cats. Let them go in and out freely, put a little break away collar on them and don’t worry. Since moving into a small, rural town I’ve greatly changed my point of view, though.
If I was still in the country, I’d probably feel very much the same way. Cats keep down the local rodent population and make it far easier to live without having traps everywhere. However, what I’ve found in living in a small, rural town is that everyone feels the exact same way and when somebody’s house is twenty feet away from yours on every side and for some bizarre reason nobody believes in fences, guess what happens? Every single animal in the neighborhood is wandering around freely all the time. There are almost constant deposits of dog poop in my yard and I’ve had my clothes ripped off the line by the things. Cats are constantly dropping off their dead prey and yowling.
When we first moved here the cat was allowed out, since he was used to it and it was clearly acceptable by the neighborhood standards. One day we realized the dogs were running loose, too, when one chased our cat down. My mother told the neighbors that they should put their dog on a leash or build a fence to keep the dog in and they looked at her like she was from Mars.
Our cat occasionally whines to go out, but he’s getting old and I’d rather not see what happens if he’s incapable of outrunning something. But also, I find the neighbors’ animals so annoying and destructive that I couldn’t possibly contribute to the problem by allowing my cat outside.
Posts like this is why the indoor cat threads always end up so bitter. Other people in other places live differently than you do; what is so hard to understand about that? People have given many very good reasons why North Americans (not just Americans; urban Canadians mostly have laws preventing roaming cats) live differently than you do; did you just discard all those reasons under the heading of “Not like us, therefore invalid?”
My MIL has a couple that she’s been feeding for over 10 years and they refuse to come in.
You can let them in if you don’t have other cats. However, if you’re going to do that, your best bet is to capture them and take them to the vet for a good check-up.
We got Little Graycie around Thanksgiving and we let her in the laundry room where we kept her quarantined until the doctor gave her a clean bill of health. She’s doing great with the rest of those cute little fuckers who run our lives.
I would like to hear the rest of this story. Did the child grab the cat by the tail?
Cats generally do not attack without provocation. Against larger creatures, they almost always only attack if cornered, grabbed or at least being chased.
As you know though, this is not comparable to the damage a dog can and all to often does.
Pazu, good point, the disease vector could be bad. Up thread someone mentioned the danger to unsuspecting expecting mothers from cat feces in a flower bed or garden. These are the most realistic concerns I have seen listed in this thread.
Coyotes are present in the eastern U.S. This Wikipedia entry is a decent introduction, and mentions the case last month of a coyote chilling out in a Quiznos in Chicago. I have relatives on Cape Cod, so I’ve known for years about the increasing coyote population there, and the associated predation of cats and small dogs. They may not be present in your area now, but likely will be in the future.
For every bird killed, there’s 4 small mammals and other small animals The lead illustration for that article shows a cat carrying home a dead mouse.
Your own link speaks of concern over declining populations of rural ground-nesting songbirds. However, US farmers have kept barn cats for centuries. What has changed in the rural ecosystem in recent years? There’s been a resurgence of the original native predators. Foxes and weasels are no longer profitable to trap, so they aren’t so rare as they were. Coyotes were seldom seen in the midwest when I was a kid, but now they’re not hard to find. There are occasional sightings of bobcat and cougar, which were wiped off the Indiana map long ago. This surge of predators is bound to alter the existing balance. I don’t think it will ever approach the predator to prey balance that existed before our ancestors killed off most of the native predators.