Outdoor cats. It’s not an easy subject. Cat lovers tend to fall into one of two categories—those who insist a cat can’t have a “normal” life without access to the outdoors, and those who are sure that cats should never be allowed outdoors unsupervised, ever. I’ve had cats as pets most of my life, and I used to be in the first group. I, too, thought that limiting a cat to living indoors only was unfair to the cat.
Cats I grew up with had adventures. One ginger cat crawled into the engine of our neighbor’s car for warmth and ended up riding downtown and spending the day stuck in that engine in Chinatown, where our neighbor ran a restaurant. I heard meows when I took some garbage out to the can at the curb that night and alerted my parents. They put dinner on hold while my father investigated the situation.
There was our cat, crammed next to the fan belt, unable to escape. My father and Mr. Leong, our neighbor, somehow managed to get the cat out and, after a hasty meal, my parents bathed our grease-covered cat carefully in a dishpan in the kitchen, attempting to check for wounds under the grease. The next day, my mother took the cat to our veterinarian for a check-up. Remarkably, beyond the slight cuts where the fan belt had hit him, he was unscathed. He made a full recovery, that cat who rode in a car engine to Chinatown and back, across San Francisco, and lived to tell the tale.
Our cats got lost occasionally. One was gone for several days, until our second cat led us, meowing loudly, across our small back yard to the yard of the apartment building around the corner on our block. We couldn’t see in the windows of the building’s basement, but we were sure we heard meows. My mother and I went to the building’s manager and explained that we thought our cat was trapped in their building’s basement. The manager took us to the basement and, yes, our cat was there!
Another cat went missing for days. She was finally found by my mother, having dragged herself into our back yard (from how far away we never knew). Our veterinarian reconstructed what must have happened. Our cat, attempting to escape our neighbor’s dog, had jumped to the top of the fence that separated our yards, only to have the dog grab her by the tail. She got away but, in the process, her tail was pulled out of its socket. She lost the use of her tail completely, and our veterinarian amputated it except for a small stump to protect her rear. She lived, and thrived, without a tail.
Then there was the time we went on a trip for two weeks and boarded our cats at our veterinarian’s clinic. We arrived home, without cats, and my mother went to the small room next to our back door, the area where our cats slept. I remember hearing my mother scream and rushing to see what was wrong. She stood there by the back door, her legs to the knees covered with black specks—fleas.
With no pets around for two weeks, the coastal fleas that we hardly noticed on our cats were starving and my mother was the first living thing available to eat. Needless to say, she got the fleas off herself, and our cats’ beds and sleeping area were cleaned and treated before the cats returned home.
Even with all these cat adventures (and absences and injuries), I continued, as an adult, to allow my cats access to the outdoors. I really couldn’t imagine any other way to live with cats. One of my saddest experiences was with a new kitten in the family, adopted only recently and already loved dearly. He was stolen, I think, catnapped, on Christmas Eve, probably because he was so little and so very cute. Maybe he became somebody’s holiday gift. I never saw him again.
I did have better luck with the two cats who both lived to age 21, although even their lives were not without trauma. The male cat, although neutered, was the perennial victim of a big bully cat who lived next door. I’ll never forget my veterinarian’s reaction after he drained and stitched up a horrible abscess on that poor cat’s forehead, an infected bite from the bully cat neighbor. My kitty looked bad. It was the end of October and my vet said, “He’s got his scary costume on. He’s ready for Halloween.”
Scary, yes. And often expensive, these outdoor cat adventures. Sometimes even life-threatening.
I held off on adopting any new felines after the two 21-year-olds passed. Caring for elderly pets can be quite a burden, and I was tired. Time passed, and I realized how much I missed having a cat in my life. I admitted to myself that my dog probably missed cat companions, too. I thought about it a lot. By that time, I’d lived with enough animals to understand the responsibility I would be taking on. I knew I wanted a cat in my life, but I did nothing actually to find one. Until one day . . .
I saw a post on Facebook. A local friend had a friend, also local, whose sister had just died, suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving three cats. The person who’d lost her sister already had pets of her own and knew she couldn’t adequately care for three more, so she was hoping to find homes for them. My friend agreed to adopt one. I “raised my hand,” Facebook-style, and offered to take another.
I knew the all-black female was the one for me. I love black cats, and I’ve had many. I especially liked that she was short-haired, since one of the two 21-year-olds had been long-haired and I had vowed never again. At some point, elderly long-haired cats can no longer care for their own fur, and it becomes your job to do so. That had been a unpleasant process, both for me and for the cat, and I knew I didn’t want that situation again. A young short-haired black cat sounded like a good choice. She was up-to-date on shots, spayed, and she’d never been outdoors.
That was the clincher. She’d never been outdoors.
It was at that moment, before I even met my cat, that I came to the decision that she would be an indoor-only cat . . . my first.
I knew all the pros of keeping a cat indoors-only (the safety of the cat, most importantly), and they included a noted absence of expenses such as tail amputations, flea treatments, or the stitching-up of abscesses from fights with other cats. I also knew the cons. The cat might be bored, under-exercised, unnaturally contained.
I hedged my bet by saying that I’d see how it went with the new cat. I’d wait to see if she could tolerate being indoors-only. If it was clear that she could not . . . I’d decide about outdoors then.
It’s been five years now, and she’s doing fine. No, she isn’t bored or under-exercised. She’s got a three-storey house plus two dogs and two ferrets for companionship. She runs and leaps and tears about like a wild thing—for fun, it appears. She’s happy, healthy, and very smart. She has a screened porch that looks out on the back yard where she can hang during warm weather. She has a bed on top of the ferrets’ cage in the “dog room” where we all watch TV, and she sleeps on my bed with me and the dogs, most nights and many days. She’s a great cat and we love her very much. She’s never been outdoors.
I got a very sad message the other day from a friend. He wrote: “If your old cat disappears for days and is in poor health and it freaks you out and makes you sick to not know where it is, why do you let it out? Then it comes home, then you let it out again, and freak out again. Why let it out? It drives me nuts! Jeez, can’t it just be left inside?”
I have to agree: even an old cat who’s been outdoors all his life can probably adjust more easily to life indoors-only than most cat owners think.
Make it easy on the old guy. Make it easier on yourself. Consider keeping your cat inside—please!
