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Indoors Versus Outdoors Cats: Is One Really Better Than the Other?

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Lorie Grefski lives in Pensacola, FL and is a passionate animal welfare and rights advocate.... Read More

Keeping Kitty Inside

To keep your kitty inside, no matter wha,t or to let them out? This has been an ongoing debate for quite some time now, and most people feel pretty strongly one way or the other.

Some think it’s cruel to go against a cat’s nature by keeping them indoors all the time; others think it’s absolutely too dangerous to ever let domestic cats outside. There are, of course, valid arguments for both sides of the topic. Keeping your kitty healthy is always of the utmost importance, so you should definitely keep that in mind when debating whether or not to let them go out.

Here we are listing the pros and cons, so please consider all the information carefully before deciding if your cat will ultimately be an indoor kitty, an outdoor kitty, or she will have a mix of the best of both worlds.

Safety Risks Associated With Outdoor Cats

Indoors Versus Outdoors Cats: Is One Really Better Than the Other?George Gonzalez/Flickr

 

When weighing the benefits and risks of letting your cat out, the scales tip pretty severely one way. Here is a simplified breakdown of what your cat is up against when going outside.

  • Parasites that cats can easily pick up outside include fleas, ticks, ear mites, intestinal worms, and ringworm. While not implicitly fatal, they can easily spread to your family and throughout your home. Symptoms range from skin infections to vomiting and diarrhea.
  • People, sadly, can also pose a huge threat to outside cats. While it’s easy to think cats have an inherent sense to stay away from traffic, they actually do not, and are often hit and killed by cars. They are also lured by the sweet smell of antifreeze, they fall into traps set for wild animals.
  • Cats are also often the victims of animal cruelty and have been for years. Everything from the basic BB gun to bow and arrow target practice, up to torture and death, has been widely recorded. Something that is often dismissed as an urban legend is pet theft. When you let your cat out, you leave them subject to being “kit-napped” and subjected to any number of horrors.
  • Cats who have been declawed do not fare well outdoors. Claws are an essential mechanism to protect your cat from harm, and without them, they is highly susceptible to other animals and people.

Tips to Keep in Mind for Outdoor Cats

Once you have read and pondered all these points, and you decide you do want to take your cat outside, please consider the following options to keep her safe and healthy.

  • Make sure your kitty is up to date on all her vaccinations. Because feline diseases are so contagious, it would be easy for your pet to catch something outside, even in a designated area.
  • Consider a privacy fence around your yard with cat-proof fencing at the top. This will keep your cat in a designated area that you can better control. Ideally, this keeps other cats out, as well. You can also try a cat enclosure for your yard.
  • If you choose to leash-walk your cat, be patient with the training process. Make sure you use an appropriate harness and give her a chance to be comfortable with it.

Keeping Indoor Cats Happy

Indoors Versus Outdoors Cats: Is One Really Better Than the Other?Takuma Kimura/Flickr

 

If you decide that indoor life is best for you and your feline, there are many things you can do to ensure that their life is just as fulfilling inside as it can be outdoors.

By nature, your finicky feline is genetically meant to prowl and hunt whatever small creatures they can find. The fact is, however, cats have been living with people for 12,000 years, and essentially domesticated themselves when they began hunting mice and seeking refuge in grain storage buildings. Keeping your fluffy feline in the house can be all fun and games if you follow these guidelines.

  • Provide challenging toys that encourage them to stalk, “attack,” and kick. This helps satisfy their innate urges to hunt without actually leaving you with little dead things around the house.
  • Install a window perch, get a nice big cat tree, and strategically place scratching posts throughout the home. Chances are, your cat loves to nap in the sun, climb up high, and keep her nails nice and sharp. These obstacles are sure to keep your kitty entertained for hours on end.
  • Fresh cat grass is perfectly safe for your kitty and is a great treat from Mother Nature. You can grow a patch of it or simply keep some on the windowsill.

Striking a Balance

There is no definitive right or wrong when it comes to whether or not you let your cat wander outside or not. Knowing your neighborhood and the personality of your cat are both key in finding the purr-fect balance (yes, purr-fect).

Hopefully, you have found these tips to be helpful and you and your kitty will have a long, healthy, and happy life together!

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  1. I am SHOCKED by the fact that Ms. Grefski failed to mention one extremely important thing about outdoor cats, and that is that they are, by far, THE NUMBER ONE KILLER OF BIRDS, some migratory and highly endangered.

    Wild bird populations, like many wild animal populations, are under extreme pressure worldwide, mostly from human practices and habitat destruction. They should not have to contend with yet another human-caused threat to their very existence. Please, please do not allow your indoor cat to go outside for all of the reasons mentioned in Ms. Grefski\’s article, but also to save wild birds.

    It is very selfish and anthropocentric for humans to allow their house cats outdoors. You may not think that they have much interest in birds, and that they are well-fed at home, but even if they are not hungry, their instinct is to catch, kill and maybe eat wild animals, including many birds. Please, please keep your cats indoors and support your local shelters and spay and neuter programs.

  2. If we\’re to believe that cats "domesticated" themselves by choosing to live near humans and their sources of food, then I suppose racoons are also domesticating themselves? This is absurd logic. Domestication is simply a euphemism for imprisonment at human hands. To suggest that anyone chose to become imprisoned is just a speciesist form of victim-blaming.

    And while letting cats enjoy some safe and supervised time outdoors is in their best interest, letting them roam freely is not. There are too many dangers that they haven\’t grown up learning to avoid. And allowing pampered cats to hurt and kill even a small number of chipmunks, baby squirrels, baby rabbits, birds, or any individuals who don\’t have the luxury of warm secure homes with an abundant food source provided to them is simply unfair.

    1. You are so right Monica. Every cat that is homeless or mostly outdoor and lacks his or her own warm, cuddly human is nothing short of a travesty for which every human bears responsibility and shame.

      Other species, particularly those endangered and threatened, should not have to contend with this man-made death trap called the outdoor cat.

  3. I grew up on a dairy farm where all the cats were outdoor cats. Now I am an animal communicator, and look for lost pets as one of my jobs. I cannot tell you the NUMBER OF TIMES I have received frantic calls from clients because their INDOOR cat has made it outside and disappeared.
    If you have them as indoor cats, the likelihood that they will get out is gigantic. THe next line to this story is that something scares them and THEY RUN. They run and run, until when they stop, they do not KNOW WHERE they are. Then there is a secondary problem of these cats being declawed, or not having all their teeth, so they are uber vulnerable. Cats are used to hiding where their mother put them, and having her come back and get them when it is safe. So these cats usually do not want to wander around and find where they are. It is really challenging to find them.
    The other aspect is that cats think totally differently than humans. They will wander off, and not consider themselves lost, just taking a walkabout. The Smithsoian did a study a few years ago, and found that over 50% of cats had a second home where they were also getting fed. It is common for cats to wander, more so if they are not neutered. Neuter them, love them, and trust that they also have a life purpose and know what they want out of life.
    For most of them, that means having a life that includes going outside.

    1. The 100% effective and PERMANENT SOLUTION. Guaranteed. Tested and approved.

      You will find that it is 100% ineffective to try to discuss this with any cat-advocate. Do what I did after 15 years of trying to reason-with and educate the ineducable (at the loss of THOUSANDS of native animals that their cats tortured to death on my lands). Ignore every last thing that every last cat-advocate might ever say and you too will solve a centuries\’ old problem PERMANENTLY in less than 2 seasons of your time, for a cost of only $0.003 (1/3-penny) to $0.04 per cat. Cat-advocates ARE the problem, they can\’t be any part of the solution. If you include them in the solution then YOU WILL FAIL. They now deserve and require the EXACT same amount of respect and consideration as they have shown and given to every other life on this planet, animal and human included, that being — ABSOLUTELY NONE. Then and only then will you solve this global ecological disaster that they created and are hellbent on perpetuating.

      No trapping program in the world has been able to catch-up to cats\’ breeding rates, this is precisely why Trap & Kill failed as well as Trap, Neuter, Re-abandon (TNR) is an even bigger failure. Actively and aggressively hunting them down, employing "Hunted to Extinction" methods, is the ONLY way to get ahead of and stay ahead of cats\’ breeding rates, their ability to out-adapt to any trapping method used, and also the rates at which criminally-irresponsible cat-lickers let more invasive-species vermin cats be born and dumped illegally outdoors.

      Licensing and laws do nothing to curb the problem. If cats are required to be licensed then these lying, deceitful, manipulative, and conniving cat-lickers just stop putting collars on their cats; as they did by me. And they won\’t even bother getting them micro-chipped, especially not that. They want absolutely nothing that can hold them legally accountable for their actions and the actions of their cats. We\’re not talking about the topmost responsible citizens of the world, you know. They don\’t want that responsibility of what they and their cats have done coming back on them. If they had even one iota of a sense of responsibility and respect for all other lives on this planet we wouldn\’t even be having these discussions.

      Any non-native cat that is allowed to illegally hunt our native wildlife where I live then in turn gets hunted until dead. No delays, no excuses, NO EXCEPTIONS. That\’s the very best way to keep these invasive species vermin from destroying any more native wildlife or spreading any more of their 3dozen+ deadly diseases to all other animals and humans. They had annihilated all the wildlife on my lands for 15 years, until on advice of the Sheriff I shot and buried every last one of hundreds of their vermin cats for them (AS-IS THE LEGAL RIGHT OF EVERY LAND-OWNER). Collared or not — for you MUST destroy ALL stray collared cats as well, they are the very source of every last feral cat. If you don\’t destroy them too then you have done NOTHING to solve the feral cat problem. Guaranteed. All the cat-lickers by me told me for over a decade that all their "pet" cats were sterilized. But upon inspection during shooting and burying hundreds of them, NOT ONE of their cats was sterilized. Cat-advocates and cat-owners who let cats roam free are manipulative and deceptive LIARS — one and all.

      If you live where its not legal to use firearms (areas zoned as "residential") then check into 700-1200fps air-rifles and round-nosed vermin-pellets. Many of the new ones come with their own sound-suppressor designs built-in, specifically designed for shooting vermin cats in urban areas, the demand is that great. Just remember, shoot-to-kill is a perfectly legal way to rid your homes and lands of these diseased vermin cats. Shoot-to-maim is animal cruelty, and rightly so, all hunters know this. Don\’t let them parade another illegal shoot-to-maim case in the media to exploit yet another suffering cat for donations for themselves. They torture enough cats to death with their TNR programs for that and make $millions by doing so. (Check out Better Business Bureau\’s findings of "Alley Cat All Lies" for one example of how to become a multimillionaire by torturing stray cats to death by letting them roam free. https://web.archive.org/web/20131013073823/https://www.bbb.org/charity-reviews/national/animal-protection/alley-cat-allies-in-bethesda-md-107/financial They can\’t become millionaires if they euthanize them first! No, they need dead and suffering cats in all the streets of the world so when they find them dying of TNR "attrition" they can further exploit dead and injured cats for massive donations to their own bank-accounts. You too can become a deceptive, manipulative, and morally reprehensible $multimillionaire by following this animal-torturing and cyber-bullying business-model invented by Becky Robinson!)

      Then there\’s always the "SSS and TDSS Cat Management Programs" that are exploding in popularity worldwide: Shoot, Shovel, & Shut-Up; or Trap, Drown, Shovel, & Shut-Up. Both methods are legal on every square foot of this earth. No local ordinances were violated if it never happened. In fact, most law-enforcement agencies prefer that you use either of those two methods so that these criminally-negligent cat-lickers don\’t cause even more problems for your community than they already have with their disease-infested vermin. As we ALL know, the only thing worse than having feral cats is drawing feral-cat-lickers (criminally irresponsible cat-hoarders) right to your door. They will do everything possible to destroy your life even further than they already have with their cats if they find out you are even thinking about destroying their vermin for them. Cat-lickers delusionally believe that any land on which a cat has stepped-foot is their own property and they can manipulate and control the owners and all laws on it. There are dozens of their cyber-stalking and cyber-bullying attacks on individuals, businesses, whole towns, and even corporations on a weekly basis. One time so bad that they even drove a loving veterinarian to suicide, and she only tried to save the life of one of their outdoor hoarded TNR cats. ( https://banvetabuse.blogspot.co.uk/2014_03_01_archive.html ) They will even send death-threats to Congressmen and their families. Google for: Oda Lawmakers Shun Security Threats

      Here too is a good example of what will happen should even one of their TNR cats get ran-over by a car (or dies from any other form of their "loving and humane attrition") near your place of business or your home: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=747875778604304&set=o.37899252087 And here\’s what really happened: https://www.wtov9.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/alleged-animal-abuse-investigated-weirton-5308.shtml Someone not even associated with this business ran-over one of their free-roaming cats by accident. The fun part of this cyber-bullying attack (which, luckily the business-owners had excellent lawyers and were able to get most of their cyber-attack sites shut-down fast in one day, and sue the piśś out of anyone involved), is that the group behind it all and supported by Alley-Cat-ALL-LIES (where I found the above facebook link still available) even admitted that those photos were from Europe over three years ago, another from China six years ago. https://www.chinasmack.com/2009/pictures/kittens-found-abused-dead-mother-kunming.html They just paste dead-cat photos around whatever business they want to destroy where any of their TNR cats get ran-over. Isn\’t TNR GREAT!! LOL

      This is precisely why everyone is learning to destroy all cats on their properties as quickly and quietly as possible. Telling nobody beforehand about any cats even being there. Long before these psychotic cyber-bullying cat-licker sociopaths and psychopaths get wind of the cats. Shoot (or trap & drown) cats first — tell no-one later. The only thing worse than feral cats are feral cat-lickers. You can legally shoot the former, not the latter. You need to pay lawyers and courts to get rid of the latter. THEN you can get rid of their cats. And the sad part is, that\’s EXACTLY what happens, each and every time. People are wising-up. If ANY cats are around they destroy every last one of them first, before they make any other move. Before these cyber-bullying cat-lickers can do anything about it to try to destroy and waste everyone\’s lives even more than they already have with their disease-infested invasive-species vermin cats. Not quite the results that these sociopathic cat-lickers had intended, but that\’s what they\’re getting! :-)

    2. Where cats have already learned to evade all trapping methods for trapping & drowning (and you aren\’t confident with firearms or air-rifles (local ordinances permitting)), then inexpensive generic acetaminophen (overseas paracetamol) pain-relievers are a more species-specific vermin poison (though harmful to most reptiles, which won\’t be dining on the cat-bait-foods that you\’ll be using) — a method condoned by even Audubon, Smithsonian, and National Geographic today. Stray cats have been listed as "vermin" since the early 1900\’s. (I learned this from a cat-licker. Thanks cat-lickers!) This is why it is even legal to use any and all vermin-poisons on them. For an even more species-specific vermin poison check into the toxicity of "Lilium" species of flowers too. Be certain the plant contains the word "Lilium" in the scientific-name (other plants with the word "Lily" in the common-name may be toxic to other species besides cats). Common N. American "Day Lilies" also work, they are the one exception to the rule that the name "Lilium" needs to be in the scientific name. Lilium species of flowers are 100% fatal to cats ONLY, even a bit of pollen on their fur that they lick-off will do. If they even drink a bit of water in which a bunch of Lilium flowers have been kept — that too is fatal, but totally harmless to all other species of animals (including dogs). Much safer for the environment and all other animals than the rat-poisons and antifreeze that cat-lickers have forced everyone into using on their cats. These plants when harvested and dried for year-round cat-eradication use is even better, as the unknown toxin is concentrated during the drying process (the blossoms and pollen being most toxic), and the dried plants are even more palatable to cats. An excellent mulch for anyone\’s garden or a ground-up additive for any tins of food left lying around.

      However, you really need to dispose of that cat safely and hygienically so that wildlife won\’t die from the deadly diseases cats spread even after their death. Leaving ANY cat out in nature, alive OR dead, is no better than intentionally poisoning your native wildlife to death. I know this. I fed one of the hundreds of shot-dead cats on my lands to some wildlife under my care, those animals and their offspring that they had while under my care then died from some disease in that cat-meat. Cats truly are complete and total wastes-of-flesh. They can\’t even be used to feed wildlife safely.

      I don\’t see anyone dumping cats where I live anymore. They don\’t even adopt more than can be kept under lock & key 24/7/52. When driving through the area I don\’t see even one cat on anyone\’s doorsteps anymore. I always keep an eye-out to see if there are more free-roaming cats that will have to be shot. And if I\’ll have to leave fish-oil trails on all the roadsides again, leading right to my IR surveillance system and laser-sighted rifle. The eradication of these vermin was so complete and effective that cats are non-existent from my area for over FIVE years now. Not seen nor heard a single one. So much for that cat-lickers\’ oft-spewed and manipulative "vacuum effect" deception and lie too, eh?

      Leaving ANY of their invasive species cats outside in my area means certain death for their cat, its further existence can be counted in hours. You\’d think everyone else could learn from this simple lesson. The quickest way to solve an unwanted animal and irresponsible pet-owner problem is to let everyone know that you will quickly and humanely destroy every last one of their unwanted, uncared-for, or unsupervised animals for them. They either grow up fast or, far more plausible, dump their animals elsewhere to become someone else\’s problem.

      You just can\’t be an enabler of criminally irresponsible spineless and heartless idiots — or they remain that way. (At least where you live, anyway.)

      IF THERE ARE NOT DIRECT AND IMMEDIATE IRREVERSIBLE CONSEQUENCES TO PET-OWNERS\’ CRIMINALLY-NEGLIGENT AND CRIMINALLY-IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIORS AND VALUES THEN THEY LEARN ABSOLUTELY *NOTHING*.

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