"She's an indoor kitty..."

Guidelines for Cats

Doors:
Do not allow closed doors in any room. To get door opened, stand on hind legs and hammer with forepaws. Once door is opened, it is not necessary to use it. After you have ordered an "outside" door opened, stand halfway in and out and think about several things. This is particularly important during very cold weather, rain, snow, or mosquito season. Swinging doors are to be avoided at all costs.

Chairs and Rugs:
If you have to throw up, get to a chair quickly. If you cannot manage in time, get to an Oriental rug. If there is no Oriental rug, shag is good. When throwing up on the carpet, make sure you back up so that it is as long as the human's bare foot.

Bathrooms:
Always accompany guests to the bathroom. It is not necessary to do anything . . . just sit and stare.

Hampering:
If one of your humans is engaged in some close activity and the other is idle, stay with the busy one. This is called "helping", otherwise known as "hampering." Following are the rules for "hampering":

When supervising cooking, sit just behind the left heel of the cook. You cannot be seen and thereby stand a better chance of being stepped on and then picked up and comforted.

For book readers, get in close under the chin, between eyes and book, unless you can lie across the book itself.

For knitting projects or paperwork, lie on the work in the most appropriate manner so as to obscure as much of the work or at least the most important part. Pretend to doze, but every so often reach out and slap the pencil or knitting needles. The worker may try to distract you; ignore it. Remember, the aim is to hamper work. Embroidery and needlepoint projects make great hammocks in spite of what the humans may tell you.

For people paying bills (monthly activity) or working on income taxes or Christmas cards (annual activity), keep in mind the aim-to hamper! First, sit on the paper being worked on. When dislodged, watch sadly from the side of the table. When activity proceeds nicely, roll around on the papers, scattering them to the best of your ability. After being removed for the second time, push pens, pencils, and erasers off the table, one at a time. When a human is holding the newspaper in front of him/her, be sure to jump on the back of the paper. They love to jump.

I have to add, if you see, hear, or smell someone somewhere in the house sit on the floor and open a newspaper in front of them, come immediately and sit right smack on top of the article they're reading.

If anyone in the house, anyone whatsoever, sits on the floor to go through the DVDs or the CD collection, the cat will instantly find this person the most fascinating person in the world, stomp all over them, climb on the books of DVDs/CDs, scream and yell, etc etc etc. This does not occur if a person just chooses to sit on the floor. That person is a boring person. A person looking at DVD cases however is fascinating.

Old Mr. Johnson had troubles of his own.
He had a yellow cat that wouldn't leave him alone.
He tried and he tried to keep that cat away.
Took it up to Canada and told it for to stay.

CHORUS:
But the cat came back the very next day.
The cat came back. They thought it was a goner,
But the cat came back; it just wouldn't stay away.

He gave it to a man going up in a balloon.
He told him to give it to the man up in the moon.
The balloon it must have busted; well, that's what they all said,
'Cause ten miles away, they picked the man up dead.

Now, this cat was a terror and they thought it would be best,
To gave it to a feller who was going way out West.
His train went 'round a curve and hit a broken rail.
Not a soul was left alive to tell the gruesome tale.

Now the cat was a possessor of a family of its own.
There were seven little kittens, 'til there came a cyclone.
It tore the houses all apart and tossed the cat around.
The air was filled with kittens, but not one was ever found.

Away across the ocean they did send the cat at last.
Vessel only out a day and taking water fast.
People all began to pray; the boat began to toss.
A great big gust of wind came by and every soul was lost.

They threw him in the kennel where the dog did lie asleep,
Where the bones of other cats lay piled in a heap.
That kennel burst apart and the dog flew out the side,
With the dog's ears chewed off and holes in its hide.

He gave it to a little boy with a dollar note.
He told the boy to take the cat up river on a boat.
They tied a rock around its neck - it must have weighed a pound.
And now they search the river for the little boy who drowned.

At last they found a way for this cat to really fix,
They trapped it in an orange crate down on highway 66.
Come a ten ton truck with a twenty ton load,
Scattered pieces of that crate a mile down the road.

The farmer on the corner said he'd shoot the cat on sight.
He loaded up his shotgun full of nails and dynamite.
He waited in the garden 'til that cat came walking 'round.
Seven little pieces of the man was all they found.

They strapped a bull's eye to its chest and tied it to a fence.
They lined up with their pistols; everyone was feeling tense.
It glared at them with eyes of green and with its teeth it spat.
And when the smoke had cleared away, they couldn't find the cat.

The H-bomb fell just the other day.
The A-bomb fell in the very same way.
Russia went! England went! And then the USA.
The entire human race was left without a chance to pray.

As Ally points out, this part of your argument is not actually true.

My cat was having some issues, and so after five or so years of being an indoor kitty, she was allowed out with strict supervision. It seemed to calm her down. Then one day she got stuck under the overhang of a neighbor's building. (When I tried to figure out how to get her out, she came out on her own. "You could have done that the whole time?!") Anyway then I moved to my current place, which is a courtyard apartment thingy, however you describe it, but anyway there are lots of gardens and none of the streets outside are especially busy. She mostly just stays right outside the door, and sometimes plays with the other cats. She tries to go out at night, but this is discouraged since there are sometimes raccoons that come by at night. I am hoping she doesn't get too brave about her wanderings.

Anyway, if a cat is having anxiety issues or seems unhappy being indoors, it's fine to let her out supervised (assuming it's not a dangerous neighborhood). If it's happy being indoors then why show it what it's missing? Let it be happy.

She's an indoor kitty
There's got to be a twist
An indoor kitty
No fleas up in this bitch

I thought I was the only one with a cat that does this. Mostly she's fine, but sometimes, and again in the presence of plenty of food, water, and attention, she sees it fit to walk around and yodel at the top of her voice for 20-30 minutes. Sometimes an hour. Then she settles on top of the record player and is fine for the rest of the night. It makes no sense, and it's very annoying.

Maybe she wants to go outside.

A woman I know who is a confessed animal-strong-disliker let her kids get two (free) kittens last year. After paying many hundreds of $$ for shots, neutering, microchipping and the like, she left them out one night and they were eaten by coyotes.

So then you club her unconscious with an empty wine bottle and go back to bed.

One of our cats talks to himself most of the day, but in a low conspiratorial mutter.

Yeah.

I think my cat suffers from ennui.

This is because cats, being cats, are killing all the native birds/possums/other native wildlife, escaping and going feral, etc etc.

Also as a lot of people have pointed out - what if you have no "outside"? My only "yard" is my balcony and my cat is quite happy to wander out there, sit and view her domain from the safety of being higher up than her peons.

Ditto. My cat was all outdoors, all the time. Went on walkabout, took peyote and fought all of the animals. Tuff.

This is how tough: walked into the woods a few weeks ago and never came back. Rest in peace, Spike.

http://static.flickr.com/14/15332076_a78272c6e9.jpg

It's hard to adopt a cat from a shelter in the UK if you're not going to let it out, though. They like to only give cats to people with gardens, so we had to go through an ad in the paper to get the kitten. Unfortunately he has chlamydia and infected his big brother but they're both fine now on antibiotics.

http://static.flickr.com/27/49293752_7db6882198.jpg?v=0

Mr Chang thinks indoor cats are pussies.

my vet is HOTT. BUT CHANG HAS FLEAS. ew. i don't think she was impressed.

Plus our street is pretty densely populated and if the cats did get out we'd never be able to find them.

**and we have a lot of foxes.**

A cat will see off a fox.

**we'd never be able to find them**

They will come back.

This might turn into a discussion of "monkey vs horse" level proportions, I'd be careful...

I've seen a couple of cat/fox confrontations walking home late at night, and it's true that the fox thought better of it and went off, although one time we shooed it away ourselves.

Anyway, as I said above, both cats have chlamydia and therefore weakened immune systems so there's the risk of disease as well. Plus the kitten's still got his bollocks (for the time being).

As for them coming back, how would we know unless we sit outside our building waiting for them? I'm on the 2nd floor!

Ah well. Thanks. Cat/Spike was tough as nails. I'm sure he died honorably. What's the feline equivalent of the final shootout of Scarface?