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The Debate: Inside Cats Versus Letting Outside

Well our cats are indoor/outdoor cats. But we are a km away from a country road, so virtually no chance of being run over by a vehicle. We do have coyotes around, and raptors too, and cougars and bobcats etc all which are capable of taking a cat. We have lost cats, at times, through the years. Often when they get older, and not as able to pay attention. It’s a sad day if that happens, and we try to avoid this happening. But it means so much to a cat to be able to explore their wild side, to hunt, to kill mice and chase grasshoppers. It’s great exercise, keeps a cat fit and healthy. Fresh meat is healthy and natural for a cat. Obesity in indoor cats kill as many cats as coyotes do. So, for me, it’s “six of one, half a dozen of the other”.

Our house cats are inside the house at night. They are inside the house if we are away for the day. They are inside until the sun comes up in the morning. But during the day when we are home, they come and go from the house at will. They do “cat things” (the two boys do everything together). One of the cat boys came to us as a feral, and is now a semi civilized cat who enjoys time inside, and in bed. But he is still wise to “nature” and the realities of being a potential victim of a predator. When I garden, he likes to come with me, and keep watch. If he sees something, he grows to warn me. He’s my protector. It’s often a deer he sees, but sometimes a coyote in the distance. He’s alert. He looks after me, and he looks after his dumb little cat buddy too. And the cats get their outside time, their hunting time, lots of exercise so they aren’t fat blobs with health issues. And one day, they will die, as we all do. Of something. This stupid one is here with me now, helping me type this. He will go outside with his buddy later to do cat things.

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5 cats - all outside barn cats all seasons - 20 below to 100 above. Stray female half grown cat showed 5 years ago. Had kittens. The ones that we kept are all spayed and neutered. We are in a rural area and they are vermin control, keeping down bunnies, gophers, voles, ground squirrels and snakes. The only thing they can’t cope with is racoons but they deter them to an extent. Momma cat has house privileges in winter.
Different strokes for different folks.

Thank you for all the thoughts and replies and great ideas! Window ledges, catios, the Ohio state indoor cat initiative. I agree it’s better for the birds and I love birds. Adorable pictures Clanter - as always.

And @NancyM I get it. Our last cat was miserable inside. I’m certain she would have rather been dead than live inside. She was barely in - only at night and would pace and get upset if we didn’t let her out.

We’re way off the road but still so many risks. We do have a deck that we don’t spend any time on AND if you notice my screen name ends in Wood…there’s a reason for that. DH mills wood and collects so there’s plenty of product to make something. But no time because the barn is still in construction.

But…with some chicken wire and a little creativity maybe we can whip something up on the deck.

Keep the ideas coming for all of us with indoor cats.

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I built mine right outside one of the kitchen windows and put a doggy door in the window. I covered the open part of the window with plywood or a retractable screen, when it gets too cold I take the stuff out of the window and keep it closed for the winter. It isn’t pretty and far from a professional job, but the cats are waiting every morning to get outside and are in the habit of coming in for the night as soon as the sun goes down. When I finally buy a house after this horrible housing market rage is over, I’ll build something much nicer and permanent.

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And duct tape…don’t forget the duct tape!

If you plan on giving the cats the choice of staying outside in the enclosure at night, use hardware cloth and not chicken wire. Racoons can chew through chicken wire.

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Came to post the same thing… Chicken wire keeps chickens in. It keeps nothing OUT. Hardware cloth is the way to go!

Some people who lived behind my house, and one house down were awful. They had a totally outdoor cat, who was never spayed either. She hunted for her own food too. She had so many litters of kitens, and one by one the kittens would disappear. Only the last two boys survived her, because a neighbor who was moving catnapped them.

They bragged about only taking the dog to the vet for rabies shots, and that was their only vet bill (yes, I wanted to punch the homeowners out). The man who lived behind me was worried about his indoor cats coming in contact with the neighbor’s cats, so in the old screened porch, he put 2 x 4’s or 2 x 6’s with the long side as the spacer between the porch side, and back yard (I hope that makes sense, so the screens were separated as far as possible). It was a covered porch, and he put hardware cloth on the yard side, and the metal screen on the inside, so his cats could go on the porch through the kitty door from the house, and have fresh air, and never have a chance of contacting the neighbor’s cats. He was very worried about disease, and parasites, and cat fights, so his cats had lots of outdoor time on the porch, and were safe from the other cats. The inside screen kept the mosquitos out too. I don’t remember if he had a door to the outside, but I don’t think so.

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Mom used to have indoor/outdoor, and that’s what I grew up with. I myself have settled into having two camps with a door between. The indoor cats never go out; the outdoor farm cats never come in.

I have had the best experience at this farm on outdoor cats in my lifetime. Mom, in various rental houses in towns and cities, would lose one now and then, ranging from cars to dogs to the horrific (her very first cat when Mom was a teenager died on Halloween night. I’ll leave it there and not give you specific nightmares, but Mom found her and described it to me. Must say, she never again left any black cat loose on Halloween that she could give a safe place).

But my farm is extremely rural. Little traffic. Plenty of other prey for predators. I have had multiple barn cats make it into their upper teens. I’ve been here over 20 years, and it is extremely rare to lose one. This is a different atmosphere than a city. There also are cats who are not cut out for housecat life personality wise. I’ve known a few with what I’d almost term claustrophobia. Then there are the ferals, of course. Most of my current outdoor cats came from Cat Lady, my home aide client whose cats I took over at her death, and at her place, her cats had free in/out and chose out 80% of the time. So every one of those already was used to outside life and skilled in it before they came to me. I do plan to try to keep the outdoor population over future years to strays and independent characters who aren’t suited to indoors. But they serve a valued function here on the farm, due to the abundance of prey. As for birds, I have had several people, unprompted, talk about how many birds I have at the farm. I listen to birds each morning on my woods walks, and again, I’ve been here over 20 years, and Cat Lady’s feline population explosion has been here seven years now. The number of birds around has actually increased.

So I’m playing it both ways but with two different cat populations. Of course, everything, outdoors and in, is neutered and vetted as needed.

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Keep them inside if you want them to be safe. I have a small yard with a 6’ privacy fence. I added a cat fence topper to it and it’s worked well over the last 8 yrs in keeping my cats in and other cats out. My one cat will escape every once in a while thanks to a tree that is too close to the roof. I have a ton of netting in place around the tree that usually keeps him in but every once in a long while it will get dislodged enough where he can make his bid for freedom. The cat fence doesn’t do anything to deter raccoons or possums from coming in to the yard though unfortunately. Between the coyote threat and too many dead juvenile possums in my house courtesy of one cat, the door to the yard is closed at bedtime and opened again first thing in the morning.

I also jury-rigged a dog kennel for a catio and it’s worked well. Not the prettiest to look at but doesn’t matter. Since I rent I wanted something non-permanent and inexpensive. The cats access it thru a window, and I found a company on Etsy that makes dog/cat door inserts for sliders and windows so I can leave it open all the time. They use the catio quite a bit, and my more timid cat feels much safer out there than in the yard.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lucky-Dog-STAY-Studio-Coverage-Area-0-00037-Acres-4-ft-x-4-ft-x-6-in-H-Steel-Grey-In-Ground-Kennel-UP4PRM-UR0310/318683017

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That makes perfect sense to me and sounds like a very good idea. Everyone’s home is different and should be able to be adapted to build an outdoor enclosure. It’s the individual cat owner’s choice whether they want to build one or not, but having one is very beneficial to the cats and the owners.

That’s a nice set up and I’m sure you and your cats benefit from it.

This article showed up in my news feed this morning. I had to laugh when I realized it most likely is written by a millennial. I know this because they mentioned “Bogo the Clown” and “Tomcat Silvester”! :rofl:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/jamie-sarkonak-outdoor-cats-are-a-menace-—-leashing-them-is-the-least-we-can-do/ar-AAZDtUF?li=AAggFp5

Cat owners that live in apartments with no balconies would find it difficult to have an enclosure for their cats. I say if you can fit an air conditioner in your window you can fit a cat cage in it! :rofl:

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@dressagetraks I do love your outdoor cats you share with us…especially Rascal. On further reflection you are right on several points, the car traffic is the big one for me about outdoor cats. We have so much heavy traffic on the road here, I’ve never ever gotten over stepping off the school bus in second grade to find the body of my favorite barn cat Right There. (I’ve never quite forgiven the bus driver either, didn’t they see that there was a cat body right where they opened the doors?)
And I do wonder if the suburban/semi-rural environment is also the worst for both cats turning into prey and cats being successful predators of birds, since most birds are pretty marginal in the suburban environment, forced into riskier nesting and feeding habits. And the suburban environment is perfect for dogs and coyotes.

There are several versions on Etsy for different size windows-

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Has anyone with a catio had an issue with their cats wanting to escape out a door to go outside? I don’t have a catio but a screened (with hardware cloth) porch.
One of my little monsters has tried to escape out the door and couple of times was able to get out. Fortunately she didn’t go far and I was able to grab her.
I tried “The Truman Show” approach to the outside with my indoor cats but I am afraid it is wearing off. One of my tamer ferals likes to come in once in a while and I have tried to get him to come in at night. I worry that the others will start getting ideas too about going outside.
I think I need a regular catio with no outside access door instead of the porch with the screen door.

One of mine did escape out the front door one time. I don’t know that it was related to being on the screened back porch or just kittenish shenanigans.

The bottom of the screen door was very rattly so the next time she tried when I was coming in, I kicked the bottom of the door and made a hellishly loud racket.

She hasn’t tried it since.

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Cammie your set-up is a LOT nicer than the one I rigged up when I lived in town and fenced my cats into the yard. I was a source of constant entertainment for our neighbor as I kept stringing up chicken wire, floppy tops and hardware cloth plugging holes for my two young cats that kept trying to get out. The older cats all happily stayed inside the woven wire fence.

We’ve almost always lived rural with DH/kids/open doors etc and amazingly we haven’t lost a cat to an accident or predator in 25 years. Closest we came was losing one cat’s tail to an suspected owl injury. I still have 7 cats down from 9 and two of them are barn cats (20 years old this year) that were feral but born on our place so when we moved I took them. I kept them in the house to acclimate them to the new place and they haven’t left the house since. In our stint in town I managed to keep them all alive even the two escapees. They are all indoor/outdoor here but we’re on a dead end road and have 5 dogs that patrol for predators. Their street smarts that have kept them all alive the last 20-8 years should serve them well here. If I got a new kitten (which after all these cats the last 25 years I have no desire for a kitten any time soon) I’d try to keep it inside only though… just too much can happen to a cat outside. I tried to keep ours in at one point and they all ran the doors or scratched out the window screens constantly. I gave up. Need to train them young for that I think.

It definitely helps that my female cat is afraid of heights, has minimal athletic ability and would never dream in a million years that it was possible to even get over a 6’ privacy fence. If I only had her I wouldn’t even need the cat fence topper. My male cat suddenly realized around a year old that it was possible to get over the wooden fence, which is when I put the cat fence topper on. He used to constantly test the cat fence, especially the weak spot in the prison defense, the tree by the carport. Now that he’s nearly 9 he’s no longer that interested in trying to escape, plus he’s terrified of raccoons and doesn’t go in the yard much in the dark now.

He’s a giant chicken who immediately panics if he does escape the yard and starts screaming for help, so he’s not actually going to go anywhere if he does get out. :joy: They both like to go in the carport if the front door is open, but neither is brave and they come right back in when called. They freak out if the door gets closed if they are still outside. He likes to go on the driveway at night when I let the dog out front for a bedtime bathroom break because there are crickets/grasshoppers all over. He catches one as his snack before bed then comes straight back in. Makes it a LOT easier to deal with door rushers with cats that are wimps!

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Just an update that you all have me inspired to go find the highest, most awesome cat tree around town and buy it for the front room with a HUGE window overlooking a big hill and the pond.

Also some window lofts or whatever you call them. And someday when we can do the catio it’s hardware cloth and duct tape. We’ve got so many projects going that when I mentioned it to DH he looked at me like I had three heads. And I realized I must.

Please keep all the ideas and spinoffs going. It’s great fun.

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