"She's an indoor kitty..."

You say that now...

really though I would let them out if I weren't worried about it. I live somewhere with less traffic now. Well, I'd let one of them out; the othe one is terrified of everything and prefers to live under our bed.

http://www.worth1000.com/entries/167500/167500mrTQ_w.jpg

I mean, seriously, even if you have a backyard in the urban environment you shouldn't be letting the cat out, because one day he will jump fence to the neighbor's yard and then keep going. This is not such a big issue in a suburban environment, but in urban...next thing you know, you're hosting cat drug orgies.

xpost

then we go fetch it

This is not at all applicable for sooo many people and cats. If you have a nice neighborhood with no wandering wild animals and trust your cat to return, it might work. If you live in an apartment, hell no. I've only seen a couple cats that can work well with a leash, some just freeze up and refuse to move or go insane and try to rip it off.

Other cats absolutely refuse to be "fetched" and will run like hell if any human approaches them while outside. If you don't have a porch where the cat can return hours later, you're screwed.

Domesticated housecats aren't necessarily outdoor animals. They also enjoy live food a lot more than dead stuff, but I don't see very many people releasing mice in their house when it's mealtime for the cat. If you forced a cat to live off of what it can catch, you'd be considered inhumane.

THAT. WOULD. BE. AWESOME.

xpost there's where mike is wrong, I do that all the time.

http://www.sfspca.org/WhereWeStand/wherewestand_jan_02.shtml

Also, andy, when I got my newest cat from animal care and control, I had to promise not to let the cat out. I'm not saying I follow their strictures religiously or anything, but I imagine they have good reasons for not wanting domesticated cats outside, most of which have to do with the cat's safety.

i could never keep him in, and i'm not sure its safer either. the other night, a crane fly zipped in the house and started bothering him. it irritated him enough to clump it down in one slow, graceful, bloodthirsty movement, and then he stuffed the still-jittering bug into his fluffy white chops. the look on his face as he tasted it will live on in laughter for years.

ihttp://www.flickr.com/photos/steviechickfoxyboxer/48742114/

What, exactly, is this woman doing????

(xpost)

Gear! takes care of the latter for us. He just needs to train the cats.

My cat is declawed (previous owner), and has never been let loose outside. The cat never had a desire to escape the previous owner's house (even though all her other cats did). This is why I chose her to live in my 5th floor apartment building in downtown SF. It's a perfect match. Each situation is different. Some cats go ape-shit if they are never let outside. Mine rarely feels the need to sit on the window sill, let alone get out. Also, my cat is a Siamese. I've heard from various people that Siamese aren't as interested in getting out.

My experience is completely the reverse - when I didn't let him out, stopping him getting out was a terrible struggle, because whenever the front door was opened he'd dash for it. Now, he's fairly calm and much less aggressive about getting out.

"Did you know Barbie's measurements, if projected to adult size, would be 38-18-34?"

I'm convincing myself to bring the cat outside, this is for certain.

My sister's cat likes to go outside. He is also a Siamese. he screams and yells and howls...until someone blows cigarettes on him, or lets him smell a bleach bottle. This is what the outdoors does to a domestic animal.

He's not very good at catching things

Usually only cicadas.

When I was a kid, I had an outdoor cat that survived all kinds of disasters: a near drowning in the pond, being run over by a car, being bitten by a dog (and getting a huge, foul-smelling abscess in his leg). We moved to a slightly more rural area and he vanished. The vet speculated he got carried off by an owl.

The Butchinator lives either on our bed, or on top of the beer fridge in the backyard. He is the keeper of booze in the house, one has to give him a little boop on the nose every time they get a drink. Privileged to have a kitty who can live outside yet doesn’t leave the house boundary (unlike another cat we have who we’re still trying to change the habits of; an impossible battle)

I’m sorry jimbeaux, I laughed at that last sentence and I know I shouldn’t have.

That family cat who ate the rat was the same. I think he outlasted something like 5 other cats that came and left the family in his life time (he’s still around). Got run over, constantly came home with scratches on his face from street kitty fights. He was the nicest house cat in the world during the day, but lord knows what he got up to at night

I laughed too. I was pretty bummed at the time. I mean, he wasn't anyone's idea of a lap cat, but he'd been with us for so long and had survived so much it seemed like he'd live forever. It didn't seem right for him to end like that. I hope he gave the owl a hard go of it, anyway.

My fave part is coming up with all the dumb names. We have Laszlo (his Official name), Laz, Lazopolous, Lazbian, Lazamatazz, Razzlo, Fattyboombah, Chonkers, Big'n'Fat, and Fuckface.

I would never belittle Baxter’s dignity by expecting him to tolerate “Biggidy Baxter” or “the ol’ Baxterino.” I simply pay him the respect of a peer by saying “g’day cunt” when he enters a room inquisitively.

For all we know, he could have won that fight and now sits enthroned as the conquering overlord of the native owl society

I think that was the first time I ever thought of owls as anything but wise.

My wife highlighted to me the other night that the only being on this earth that I have ever called a bastard is Butch, who is referred to as such literally everyday as he sneakily flings a claw up at my toe hanging on the edge of the bed, or bites my finger at 3am, or knocks all my books of my bedside table at 4am, or meows at the door at 6am, or vomits on the floor at 7am.

It cannot be overstated; Butch really is a bastard

jimbeaux's cat:

https://i.imgur.com/Qms7YD0.gif

Give it another 50 years, and cats and owls will evolve into a symbiotic relationship where the owls pick up the cats in their talons and do regular air raids on smaller bird societies, splitting the spoil in two. You’re cat could have been the start of a new zoological revolution.

Lol Trayce

(I'm sorry if that was insensitve, I didnt mean it to be!)