Outside Cats - is it a sin?

our kitty is much to clumsy, goofy and neurotic to be let outside. he seems pretty happy indoors, but needs to play a lot.

Some cats really want to go out, some cats don't.

I've got foxes in the neighborhood, I don't know if they fuck up cats or mutually leave each other alone but I wouldn't want to test it.

I once knew someone who found a cat in a dumpster (so technically an outdoor cat) and took him in and tried to make him an indoor cat. But the cat rebelled and acted mental and destroyed clothes and many other things inside the apartment. So this person told me she hated the cat and couldn't take it anymore and handed the cat over to me. I let the cat be indoor/outdoor (this was in suburban Florida) and the cat seemed to change personality over night, and became a cat that everyone loved and appreciated. And the cat lived approximately 19 years. So I think there is something innate in cats that makes them want to be outside.

We have 6 adopted-as-adults semi-feral cats that are indoors only. 2021 has been a year of litter and litterbox experiments but we're pretty well sorted going into 2022 with 3 Breeze boxes, 3 stainless steel boxes (2 with hemp litter, 1 currently with silica crystals), and 2 puppy pad locations. None of them really want to go outside, though we do set up a catio in warmer weather.

our adopted seniors were indoor guys so we've kept it that way. one of them has gotten out a couple times due to someone inadvertently leaving something open, luckily he yowls loudly as soon as he's out so we know about it.

there's tons of coyotes where i live (just outside of portland)

one night last summer i spotted a coyote in ladd's addition (inner portland). thought it was a loose dog at first as i didn't think it possible that coyotes would even be here... this site told me otherwise.

Coyotes are pretty much everywhere. Raccoons, cute as they are, will also maim and kill cats. Where I am (suburban King County, south east of Seattle), we also have bobcats and the occasional mountain lion.

I grew up on a farm and so all our "pets" were semi tame farm cats, I guess I didn't think about it, I remember a few deadly cold nights mom would bring them in. one was Old Blue, absolutely huge cat with beautiful blue eyes, he'd disappear for a couple weeks then saunter up the driveway. we assumed he had similar arrangements with neighboring farms

If I was a cat I'd just simply avoid continents with coyotes and bobcats!

Yes and no.

Take a stand Aimless you coward

(Aimless carefully looks up at the ceiling and clasps his hands together around his knees)

I often try out a different geographical history on my cats: first fleet Aussie/English prison ship cats, viking hunters, residents of the Egyptian royal court, Mongolian yurt dwelling cats, Moscow or Istanbul street cats. I have never imagined a cat to come from godforsaken coyote-infested America, and for good reason.

Calzino otm

i hate this thread. keep your indoor cats indoors. litter boxes don’t smell if you use good litter and fucking clean them

my cat was a rescue, found in queens in 2013, came to live with me and my wife in BK in 2014. We moved to CT in 2018, where in addition to being a great cuddle/purr friend to the two daughters that came to be while he was in our house, he could run around outside and be the predator he was frankly born to be but could not enact in NYC… he often proudly brought his prey inside…

and yet in early october, we let him out at some point, and I found his his lifeless body in our yard in the afternoon, felled by a bobcat or a coyote… surely by his own estimation, we gave him a great life, but he lived and then died by the sword…

One of my cats was a rescue and he is still really shy around people to say the least. Still really sweet though.

I live in suburban Maryland (outside Baltimore) and we’ve had reports of coyotes roaming about here in recent months, which is surreal.

I grew up with 4-5 cats. Resolutely indoor. My mom was no messing around.

sometimes on instagram I see Americans post photos of themselves taking their indoor cat out for a walk around the neighbourhood on a leash - is this a common thing? I find it impossible to imagine my cats letting anyone walk them around on a leash (but they've been allowed out by themselves all their lives, so it's different I guess)

Soref, it’s an occasional thing from what I’ve seen, but not at all common.

There was a guy in the bit of SE London I lived in til recently who I would see walking around the streets with this Bengal-looking cat just chilling on his shoulders taking in the sights

I once knew someone who found a cat in a dumpster (so technically an outdoor cat) and took him in and tried to make him an indoor cat. But the cat rebelled and acted mental and destroyed clothes and many other things inside the apartment. So this person told me she hated the cat and couldn't take it anymore and handed the cat over to me. I let the cat be indoor/outdoor (this was in suburban Florida) and the cat seemed to change personality over night, and became a cat that everyone loved and appreciated. And the cat lived approximately 19 years. So I think there is something innate in cats that makes them want to be outside.

― Josefa, Friday, December 31, 2021 10:15 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

we found my childhood cat in the bushes next to our house, and for the majority of her life she was outdoor/indoor, though she very rarely goes out these days because she is 20. she’s indestructible

I tried walking one of my childhood cats on a leash, it took him all of 2 minutes to get out of the collar. Not sure I'd even seen a dog harness at that point but it might have been feasible with a cat version.

When I was a kid all our cats were indoor/outdoor and loved it. One would wander off for days at a time, pick fights with neighborhood dogs, etc., another would just lay in the driveway for a while on summer days then come back inside. I haven't had a cat in 30 years though, and I currently live on the second floor, so any cat I might theoretically own would be strictly indoors — I'm not going down a flight of stairs to let a cat in/out.

We have a shit-ton of feral cats on our block; there's an old lady in the next building over who actually lays out plates by her parking space and feeds them, which I'm not sure I agree with.

I adopted a cat not long after moving to Atlanta in 2011 and, despite my best efforts to change him, he would NOT be contained in a tiny 1br apartment with me. I really, really, really hated to let him wander around outside all night, and in the end he got hit by a car like told him he would a thousand times. Strictly indoor cats for me since then (and it helps if you get them when they're kittens so they don't know any different).

our cats are indoor/outdoor. we live in a place where at least one of them is doing some population control to the degree that is probably good for the habitat. a cat we'd lost a few years back had maybe 6-8 years prior been living in an apartment. very overweight and lethargic. her move to our current place resulted in a healthier lifestyle for her remaining years. i would personally have a hard time living someplace after this that required my cat to live indoors full-time.

did you know outdoor cats kill so many birds that there are no birds in britain?

No way are these two ever going to be allowed outside the house.
https://ptpimg.me/g4j77l.jpg

But they're the perfect indoor breed (Persian), and their 10-year-old, formerly feral sister, Clementine, would kill them if she weren't allowed to live outdoors pretty much 24-7. So, Clementine is allowed out. Fortunately, we live far enough back from any streets that I'm not worried about cars, and there aren't coyotes or raccoons in Hawaiʻi. She's so much happier out there, and watched after by the neighbors, too, who all love her. I just wish she could've been adjusted to tolerate other cats in the house. We certainly tried our best, but it was impossible.

One of my indoor cats is eager to go outside. Earlier this year he got out and I didn't notice for about 5 minutes. I go behind my house and he's back there in a showdown with a stray cat, and he's already been scraped and gouged by a thorny desert plant. There are many other strays, many other thorny plants, plus coyotes and mountain lions. He'd been dead within a week if I let him roam around.
I do have a harness and leash for him, but I put it on incorrectly the first time so now he's traumatized by it.

Deeming it "obscenely cruel" to keep cats indoors is just ridiculous

*sips milk, cracks knuckles*

if yr cat is happy to live indoors, that’s best for everyone

if yr cat yearns to go out and you live in a safe area (no predators no loose dogs no busy roads no malicious neighbors no battlecats) with an over abundance of common minifauna that you don’t mind unleashing hell upon, that’s aight, just make sure kitty is vaxxed up

if u meet the previous criteria except there’s cat snackers around then bring yr babies in before dusk & keep them in while it’s dark

if where you live isn’t ideal for free roaming then a couple reasonable compromises would be

i) a catio if you have the space/money

ii) a harness, a leash, and a protected outdoor area (fenced yard or isolated park where you can see other folx and critters coming from a ways off)

it’s a real bad idea to hook a leash to a cat’s collar, which hopefully is a breakaway collar to begin with since they can hang themselves otherwise. at some point any cat on a leash is gonna freak out and try to scarper & it’s better if all that force is distributed across its chest rather than focused on its throat.

like with any strange new thing, when you introduce a kitty to a harness you gotta go slow and build up pawsitive associations, and some cats just straight up won’t have it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

this is my smudgy puff

https://i.imgur.com/z7Ws2OY.jpg

this thread had me thinking about your excellent tips on the kitten thread.

A handsome specimen. Is the name Pele?

I think this conversation, raging 24/7 across the Internet as it is, usually turns into cross-purposes arguing between Americans who have witnessed the aftermath of traumatic coyote-maulings and slightly baffled non-Americans who live happily with tiddles in a quiet residential cul-de-sac in Surbiton or whatever

All the cats I had growing up were outdoors to some degree and couldn't have been convinced otherwise. With current incumbent Richie I'm a bit more minded to go with one of the above compromises because I live on a railway line and also he's kind of expensive looking

yeah if i found a Richie i’d surreptitiously slip him in my bag & saunter away whistling, sorry but that’s the way it is

yes that is my Pele! my bunny, my snoogle, my mushkin, ruler of my house and all she surveys 🙏

gracias visiting! i kind of can’t shut up abt kitties, had to stop myself from posting a dozen irrelevant follow ups 2 that post about earwax and boxes and dangling poop, etc.

I've got foxes in the neighborhood, I don't know if they fuck up cats or mutually leave each other alone but I wouldn't want to test it.

We once saw a fox by our front yard. Our cat was out and just watched it from a short distance. This particular fox didn't care about the cat.

I remember a few deadly cold nights mom would bring them in.

We moved into our current house a week or so before the infamous polar vortex of 2014. At one point the cat went out and didn't return for maybe seven days. We figured he was a goner, what with the temps hovering around -15 or whatever it was. But after about a week or so he showed up at the backdoor again, none the worse for the wear. We figured that because it was so cold all the animals called a detente and just huddled together in a pile of cats, dogs, raccoons, mice, possums, etc., until the worst of the weather waned. And then the smartest of the bunch said everyone had a count of 100 to get to where they needed to be before the hostilities resumed.

Our cat is around 14 or 15, a little chunky, blind in one eye and missing a fang. He still goes out but not far. This is him most of the time:

https://i.imgur.com/4jIdB4F.jpg

most unexpected thread ever.
had no idea this was even a thing.
i have always had cats, and they have all been both indoors and outdoors cats.
my current cat is getting older, 14, and so she spends more time indoors now.
but still, she needs to head out a couple of times a day.
that said, we are off a main road, and have a garden.
she never ever ventures far these days.
when she was a young'un we used to see her on the hunt in the fields behind us, but those days are well over.

A thing here in my US community is people getting super mad about cats in their yards, trapping them and taking them to impounds in other counties where their owners won't think to look for them. Also roaming cats being trapped and used as bait in dog fights. Unfortunately found out about this when one of our semi-feral rescues got out of the catio last summer and never returned. After months of searching for him and postering every utility pole within a mile, we can only hope he found a better home and didn't meet a terrible fate. But it's hard never knowing.

bloody hell.

oh, and what's a 'catio'?

xp fuck me, if they do that to cats I don’t like to think about what else they do

Catio is an enclosed outdoor space for cats - usually has an entrance directly from the house. Ours is on one end of our covered deck.

as soon as i posted i realised : catio = patio for cats.

never heard the phrase before, nor the chaos re owning a cat.

Yeah I think knowing the potential for cat abuse is a big driver for me to have indoor only cats. I rescued a kitten years ago from a ditch behind a grocery store where kids were shooting arrows into a litter. She was the only survivor.

Now *that* is obscenely cruel

oh, and to answer the thread : of course it's not a sin if a cat is an outdoor cat.
have you seen cats vs pigeons/crows/blackbirds
i.e. the predominant birds in most UK environments.
those fuckers totally scare the fuck out of cats.
personally i would love it if cats had the upperhand over pigeons as this plague island could do with a massive cull of the bastards.

A pigeon shat on me from the top of a floodlight post in the park a couple of months back. It went over my hair and down the front of my coat, the only luck I had is it missed my glasses and eyes. The bastard was looking very pleased with its work as well. It was all my indoor dog's fault for pulling me towards the post.

I think it was Elizabeth Kolbert who wrote about the link between humans bringing cats into regions and mass bird species extinctions. Maybe the birds have wised up about these furry killers a bit since the late prehistoric period!

I always thought that the problem was driven overwhelmingly by *feral* cats, not house cats.

90% of the time my boys are doing this
https://imgur.com/a/v03UgQE

Re: birds and cats. My experience has been if the bird finds my cat, they chase it and swoop it til kingdom come. And I feel bad for my cats and curse all flying creatures for their cruelty towards some of my closest friends. But then I will catch a moment where one of my cats finds a solitary bird that HASN’T noticed it. And it gets low to the ground and starts slowly slinking towards it ready to pounce. Typically they fail and the bird calls all its mates and they terrorise my cats again. The vicious circle. The birds in my area are pests that attack small children (seriously) so I don’t feel much sympathy for them when my cat is on the hunt. Between the three of them and their two years of life, they have caught two birds. I’m not crying myself to sleep about it

https://imgur.com/a/v03UgQE

xp not overwhelmingly no - nearly 1/3 is attributed to domestic indoor/outdoor cats, not including barn cats:

We estimate that cats in the contiguous United States annually kill between 1.3 and 4.0 billion birds (median 2.4 billion) (Fig. 1a), with 69% of this mortality caused by un-owned cats.

We defined owned cats to include owned cats in both rural and urban areas that spend at least some time indoors and are also granted outdoor access. We defined un-owned cats to include all un-owned cats that spend all of their time outdoors. The un-owned cat group includes semi-feral cats that are sometimes considered pets (for example, farm/barn cats and strays that are fed by humans but not granted access to habitations), cats in subsidized (including TNR) colonies, and cats that are completely feral (that is, completely independent and rarely interacting with humans). We did not classify cats by landscape type or whether they receive food from humans because the amount of time cats spend outdoors is a major determinant of predation rates and because predation is independent of whether cats are fed by humans

I've been on both sides of this and basically agree with H.P.: I feel like the domesticated cat was designed to live with humans while still having access to the great outdoors.

I grew up in a ruralish area with an indoor/outdoor cat, and then lived for many years as an adult with indoor-only cats. Now we have an indoor-outdoor cat — my wife already had him when we met, and he was already set in his ways. I didn't object, and honestly living again with an indoor-outdoor cat after living with indoor-only cats, you will have a hard time persuading me that indoor-only cats are just as happy. I'm not saying they can't be happy, but I really do not think they are as happy as cats allowed to go outside. My anecdotal experience of my own and my friends' indoor-only cats is that they are more neurotic and more prone to various kinds of weird behaviors because they have to find some way to get out all that cat energy.

But I do feel bad about the toll our guy takes on birds, I find at least a few dead birds in the yard a year (or he brings them inside), and I'm sure there are more that I don't see. (I don't mind him wreaking havoc on the local baby rabbit population, because our neighborhood is overrun with bunnies.) I don't know. It's a little hard for me to imagine having an indoor-only cat again, but it could happen in the right circumstances. I don't judge anyone else's choices or priorities, I don't think it's an open-shut case either way.

You provide food for us, we provide food for you kind of deal

imagine your cats instead of Lana del Rey in "Video Games"