Feel free to unfollow me right now if you believe it’s okay to endanger your house cat or the local native fauna it absolutely will kill by allowing it outside unsupervised/off lead.
Outdoor cats have a lifespan of 2-5 years. Indoor cats regularly live 15+, even getting up to 20+ sometimes. Unsupervised indoor-outdoor cats often don’t make it past 5 and the ones that do are a very lucky exception. Why?
They get hit by cars. They get attacked by other animals (predators or other pets like dogs) including other cats. They eat things that are toxic to them. They get killed by other humans. They contract diseases like FIV and FelV.
Even if your cat DOES live longer than 5 years, cats that go outside are responsible for the deaths of billions of birds and other small fauna per year. There have been studies done on this. It’s not people pulling stuff out of their asses, it’s something scientists literally studied and reported results on. Don’t believe me? Google “do cats kill wildlife” and have a read. They’re on the IUCN’s list of worst invasive species and have contributed to the extinction of 60+ species, and they continue to cause a problem for other threatened species of small animals.
If you think it’s okay to expose your cat to these hazards and potentially cut its lifespan by more than half, if you think it’s okay to allow your cat to kill native fauna to indulge it’s “natural instincts” instead of, I don’t fucking know, playing with it with toys literally designed to allow it to safely indulge those instincts, then you have no business following me.
I’m not here to indulge your whimsy about how cats “need” to be outside unsupervised to be stimulated and lead a happy life- I can assure you, they don’t. There are p l e n t y of enrichment devices and structures people can buy or make to ensure that their cats lead happy, full lives indoors to the ripe old age they are supposed to lived to.
You also have the option of lead training your cat if you really believe they need to go out. This is something that proponents of “let cats go outside” ignore almost completely. They somehow believe that it’s all or nothing- either the cat lives 100% indoors without ever seeing sunlight OR it’s let outside without supervision where it can be injured, killed, or cause harm to the environment. Those aren’t the only choices. Cats adapt to leads very easily. They don’t like it the first couple of times, usually, but also usually when they figure out lead=outside, they get over it and the best of both worlds gets to happen- your cat remains safely under your supervision where it cannot come to or deliver harm, and it gets to go outside.
TL;DR Letting your house cat outside unsupervised is extremely dangerous both for your cat and the local wildlife and people arguing otherwise can see themselves out the door because I’m not about people endangering animals out of willful ignorance. You, along with every other pet owner out there, have a responsibility to protect your pets to the best of your abilities, and choosing not to do so in some misguided attempt to indulge their whims is poor animal husbandry. Any argument to the contrary is just an excuse to continue doing things which put animals in danger.
Your arguments sound very professional. Good for you being able to stay calm and argued your point so well.
Double on the unfollowing me if you have an outdoor cat.
Additionally if you do want your cat to go outside, you can buy “cat cage” installations and have them span your yard! It looks like this (pictures of our backyard):
We have this span your 4x6 meter backyard and is attached to the house directly. This enables the cats to go outside when they want without going off your property. And it’s nice to sit with them!
Here they call this a “catio” and it’s becoming more popular as a way to allow your cats outside time without having to directly supervise them, and they are GREAT.
Here’s one not attached to the house:
Here’s some from the outside view:
There are smaller versions too!
Catios and outside cat runs/perches are a fantastic way to give your feline access to the outdoors while still keeping them safe.
Serious question, because I agree with all of this but we have a naughty cat.
If our cat slips out when we open the door, and we can’t catch her, what should we do? We live in a place with a LOT of wildlife. She normally comes back in within an hour (she gets mad at us for “letting her outside”) but obviously we don’t want that to some day not be the case, and we want her to stop bringing us presents. Because gross and also not good for the environment/ecosystem.
Do we lead-train her and let her go outside and then she won’t get very far? Part of the reason she goes outside is to eat grass, so should we just buy some cat grasses and have them inside? We’ve thought about that but the grass isn’t always the only reason she’s outside, so we’re worried that she’ll keep getting out anyway and then that defeats the purpose of buying cat grasses.
Do we just not stimulate her enough inside? Like, seriously, what do we do about this cat?
For this, it sounds like she’d likely lead train fairly well. If she’s only gone for a short while, she probably just wants a little bit of outside time and she’d be fine. The thing about lead training isn’t that you just pop it on and let them out, you do need to stay with them while they’re out to ensure they don’t get tangled in anything or escape the lead. May I also recommend this person’s cat jackets for a harness? They are comfortable and fairly escape proof.
As for the “gifts” you may want to look into some additional toys for her that can satisfy her desire for that particular behavior. Stick and string toys and laser pointers are good for this, but a lot of people don’t reward their cats for a solid catch, which is fine, but if your cat is looking to chase and catch a thing she can eat, it may help to give her a treat at the end of playtime. This encourages play behaviors with you over going outside to do it.
As for the cat grasses, you can actually make her a little grass mat!
All it takes is a large litterbox (or if you want to do bigger, go to a hardware store and look for the cement mixing section, and they sell rectangular black tubs there- that’s what the first two tubs are at least), some clean dirt, and some grass seed without fertilizer in it (or if you can’t find that, you can plant cat grass from a pet store in the middle, it will spread but not as fast).
Again, any one of these on their own likely won’t completely solve the issue, but between the three, you may see a decrease in escapist behaviors.
As long as we’re here, @crabcakedraws asked what I say to people in apartments whose cats scream and destroy things demanding to be let out, and first you should go have a talk with @pangur-and-grim about Grim’s behavior around go-outside time. My own advice is to take the time and effort to train your cat to go outside on a lead with you. If you think that’s too much trouble and you’d rather just expose your cat to the risk of illnesses, injuries, or potential death by opening the door and just letting them out, I definitely can’t stop you. But that doesn’t make it right or good.
Think of it this way. Children, actual human children, throw tantrums when they’re not allowed to do whatever they want; does that mean parents should allow kids to do whatever they want all the time? Absolutely not, and you’d be appalled at any parent that said they did so. Even if a child screams and cries, even if they throw things or hit you, you’re still the parent. It’s still your responsibility to make sure that they are receiving the correct/best care you’re capable of providing. Don’t want to do that/think that’s too hard? I have news for you: you may have chosen the wrong pet.
I’m going to keep adding to this because I have been getting questions.
Stray/Feral cats that do not belong to anyone are not what we’re discussing here. If you are managing strays or ferals that don’t belong to you but that in your location, that’s a different situation than someone who buys/adopts a cat and then releases it outside either permanently or off and on. The best course of action for managing ferals is to get them fixed (low cost spay/neuter places are GREAT for this! We got some feral cats at my college fixed for like $30/per) and make sure you give them what protection you can from diseases (for example, offering them wet food with a liquid wormer in it a couple of times a year). You can also affix reflective cat collars to them with bells- this will make them more visible to cars, and the bell can reduce their kill success by up to 30% (which, if you or others are feeding them is a good thing for local small fauna). If you aren’t sure a cat is a stray or an indoor/outdoor cat, buy a reflective collar and a tag with your # on it (costs like $10 total for both in a lot of places)- I can almost guarantee that you’ll get a call soon if the cat has an owner.
I’ve also talked some about enrichment, but we’re gonna talk some more, since it seems like people aren’t sure what counts for indoor cats. SO, let’s start with toys.
Wand toys (stick and string) are great for interactive play with your cat. They look like this:
They stimulate your cat’s drive to chase moving, fluttering objects and allow you to provide that live “kick” response when they pounce on it, because you can pull the string. They’re widely available but easy to make yourself- Here is a tutorial on making them yourself for cheap!
Laser pointers provide the same entertainment with a different sort of allure. Laser pointers are better for if you have a cat that likes to run a lot- you can easily send the dot far from you! They’re like $3.
You can purchase any number of chase toys that you can throw for your cat, in all sorts of shapes and sizes from mice to birds to random shapes. Many of them come with catnip in them. Some of them have noise makers so they shriek like the wildlife your cat is not killing outside. Some of them rattle. Some of them crinkle (in fact, you can get neat foil balls to throw that are shiny and crinkle). Some of them are spongy. There are so many options and cats LOVE them!
Kick toys are another great thing! Kick toys are usually bigger than throw toys and somewhat oblong, like a fish. In fact, many of the toys are shaped like fish! But there are also other kinds- I’ve seen rainbows and cigars and just big thin rectangles and bananas and a lot of others). These toys help satisfy your cat’s fighting/gutting instinct. If they were to indeed catch a big fish, they would be able to grasp it in their front paws and kick with their back legs to disembowel it. The same goes for other animals your cat might find itself in a fight with, including other cats. If your cat likes to tussle, this might just be the toy for them!
Circular ball toys are good fun for containing the small fast object your cat wants to chase (so they don’t lose it under the couch or something.
If you want to spend a little more for an active cat, you can look into getting them an exercise wheel! Many cats, when they figure out what it does, will thoroughly enjoy running on these things (and the videos on youtube are GREAT, if you want a good time go type in “Cat exercise wheel”). The first photo is the original wheel, but there are others out there now too.
If you want to take your cat outside but don’t want to lead train them or build a whole catio, there are other options like cat tents!
Indoors, cat tunnels are totally a thing and cats love them, especially soft ones.
You can also buy window perches that just suction cup to windows and don’t cause any damage to walls (good for apartments!) and they come in a variety of styles!
You can get your cat an autogroomer device, they come in several different styles:
This allows the cat to receive grooming from a source outside of themselves when you aren’t around.
You can purchase a see-through window feeder for birds, and place it somewhere that your cat will be able to see, so they will have something to watch while you’re not playing.
In addition to toys and activity devices like the above, you can give your cat enrichment during feeding and watering times as well. Waterers that have moving water are preferred by many, many cats:
And puzzle feeders can both provide enrichment and slow down cats so they don’t gobble all their food quickly (which often results in an upset tummy… I have heard a lot of stories of folks whose cats eat a bunch and then immediately puke it up whole… puzzle feeders help alleviate that! And they can be DIY for extremely cheap!)
(this one has toys in it, but you can put food in it too)
Anyway, there’s no reason your house cat HAS to go outside unsupervised or uncontained, and there are P L E N T Y of ways to vastly enrich an indoor cat’s life experiences while under your care.
I literally live in the woods. There is no shortage of wildlife. No species in my area are endangered or threatened.
Cars however, are an issue. A small tabby nearly died. Most cats are good at avoiding cars though. Whether a cat should go outside depends on that cat’s ability to survive its environment and the ability of the environment to survive the cat. There is no one size fits all approach here.
Okay. Let me explain something from a big-picture ecological perspective as someone who has done a lot of species surveying and habitat restoration and who also lives in the woods.
You are falling prey to the shifting baseline problem, which essentially means that your idea of a “normal” amount of wildlife for your area is going to be very different from what was normal 100 years ago, 200 years ago, etc. And the more we move the baseline of what’s normal, the more we lose sight of what an ecosystem was like before we went in and damaged it. We shouldn’t be looking at wildlife populations as they are now and considering them the standard to strive for, because these are populations that are struggling a lot more than you think.
What you consider “a lot of birds” is almost certainly lower than what “a lot of birds” was in the same place a century ago. Sure, maybe your LOCAL ecosystem hasn’t seen what you see as a significant drop in wildlife population. However, just because a species hasn’t been marked as endangered or threatened by a government entity (which, by the way, tend to be woefully behind the reality of things because bureaucracy and lobbyists) doesn’t mean it isn’t in decline. In fact, a large portion of bird species worldwide are in decline, even ones considered common.
This is due to a combination of a whole bunch of factors ranging from drastic habitat loss to pollution to, yes, predation by invasive species like cats. You can’t single out any one of these as THE reason; it’s the fact that they’re acting like a one-two (three-four-five-six-etc) combo punch that’s making it so damned hard for wildlife to adapt to the many ways in which humans have fucked things up so badly. It’s like when you get your rent raised by 40% and your car dies and you lose a third of your hours at work and your significant other loses their job entirely and ends up with a chronic medical diagnosis that’s going to need expensive medication for the long term, and all this happens in one week and guess what? Next week’s going to just be worse!
Your local birds are parts of more widespread species whose genetic diversity is shrinking due to individual populations going locally extinct. And yes, that’s very important, because the rate of species extinction and endangerment has risen in the past 100 years and it’s only going faster. Which means that MORE species are going to edge toward endangerment, including ones you think are okay, ESPECIALLY as climate change hits us harder and makes it exponentially more difficult for all species to adapt to rapid changes in their environment.
So we NEED to treat our local wildlife as though they are precious, irreplaceable reservoirs of biodiversity and genetic resources, because that is exactly what they are. And the more people are “fuck, I don’t care” about the effects on their local population of a given species, the more likely it is that that species is going to experience greater fragmentation as more and more pockets of individuals go locally extinct and the remaining animals are more isolated from each other. Maybe it’s not obvious now, but it will be, and we have the power to do something about it BEFORE it becomes a problem.
So look past your own woods, and pay attention to the overall pattern that we’re ALL a part of. You and your cat aren’t isolated, and neither are your wildlife.
All of my cats in my entire lifetime have been indoor-outdoor cats. All of them have lived past 10 years. One of them even reached 19 years. He’d go off for days at a time and come back perfectly fine. I understand where people are coming from but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.
Another note, humans have killed more than cats have and we still let them outside. Maybe before you go blaming cats for killing other animals, go and take a look at your own species.
I. Did. Do. That. Read this again:
“This is due to a combination of a whole bunch of factors ranging from drastic habitat loss to pollution to, yes, predation by invasive species like cats. You can’t single out any one of these as THE reason; it’s the fact that they’re acting like a one-two (three-four-five-six-etc) combo punch that’s making it so damned hard for wildlife to adapt to the many ways in which humans have fucked things up so badly.”
Cats are our fault. WE domesticated them. WE put them in ecosystems they weren’t native to. And WE’RE the ones perpetuating the problem by giving outdoor cats a pass.
