AIBU to think cats should not roam unsupervised like dogs?

We have a cat and tried to keep him as an indoors cat but he attempted to get out at every available opportunity. Once escaped out of a window being opened a sliver and fell off the balcony breaking his femur.
We eventually decided a potentially shorter but happier life for him was the best option.
That being said I would never live near a main road, when buying my current house it had to be suitable for him too.
Not all cats are happy living their lives looking out the window.

I think you need to grow up and find something better to do. I'm not even going to go into your bizarre 'reasoning' as to why cats are "let out to roam".
I think your village is missing one isn't it?!

No, it’s to protect local wildlife, birds etc.

Cats are a natural method of keeping the amount of rats and mice down.

Agree.

My cats go out in the day and stay in at night. That's their choice . My cats need to go out as they enjoy sitting in my garden. One uses a corner of my garden as a loo and the rest use litter trays in the house. Cats aren't dogs . My cats hunt and kill mice and rats . I live near an area where there's trees and grass areas so there's rats and mice. There's lots of cats in the area I live. Some owned and some poor strays or abandoned. I feed them and try to get them in rescues so do my other neighbours. Speyed/ neutered and well fed cats don't usually cause a problem. It's not the stray cats fault they've ended up in bad circumstances it humans. There's also hedgehogs and foxes where I live that wander round. I feed them too.

I think you’re a bit of a cunt tbh 🤷‍♀️

Dogs are fully domesticated and cats aren't, so there is a different legal requirement in the UK for these animals.

While I know some people keep indoor cats, it's hard for me to imagine that they are fully able to engage in their natural behaviours.

I guess the anti-cat brigade could campaign for a change in the law to require cats to be kept in, but I struggle to imagine that being agreed.

The norm for us when he had cats was to let them out during the day then keep in at night. They need their freedom but didn't like them being out at night; hunting and killing, their safety above all.

You cant walk a cat on a lead like a dog. When are they supposed to go outside and exercise??

Dogs are pack animals, they need to be walked but also need proximity with their “pack”. Cats need to roam as solitary predators at certain times of the day. You can’t really compare the two.

Dogs are naturally free roaming pack animals, the domestic pets that are kept indoors and taken out on leads, supervised, and hopefully trained and under control and living a completely unnatural lifestyle. However, we view it as responsible dog ownership to keep dogs this way. There is absolutely nothing about cats that means they can’t be kept like dogs, and just because we traditionally don’t expect cat owners to be responsible doesn’t mean it’s ok.

Train kittens to walk on a harness, provide them with supervised outdoor time and enrichment indoors.

Dogs are fully domesticated . Cats are not. Its in their nature to wander. Its even crueler to not let them out.

Dogs attack people. Cats generally don’t.

Cats have done dreadful damage to the wildlife in the last few years where I live. I wish they'd just fucking die. I hate the cunts.

Was it Australia or New Zealand that the law was brought in to protect native fauna which had developed in isolation from predators and had no defences against cats, which were introduced by settlers?

Possible. But cruel.

My childhood was the 70s and 80s which were over 40 years ago! 20 years ago brings you into this century, which counts as yesterday to me!
I don't know when people stopped letting the dog out to roam, certainly still going on in the 90s but I haven't noticed it since.

I’ve had two cats
both kept in at night, neither hunted and both have come back in to use their litter tray
currently cats idea of roaming is sitting in next doors garden, he has a range of about 3 metres and then runs back in!

Forgot to say that when I went to Zante there were cats everywhere. They even wandered into the restaurant of the hotel where I was staying and people, including me, were feeding them. You would've hated it OP! 😁

Have you ever owned a cat? I suspect not. Good luck with trying to get them to do anything they don't want to 😂

Gosh OP you’d hate where I live. There is a local cat with her own FB page who likes to roam into the village and hang around outside, but sometimes inside the Tesco local 😂 she’s quite famous locally and her owner knows where she is, people always recognise her and the Tesco staff are always trying to eject her 😂

🤣🤣

Cats have far too much pride and street-cred to be seen dead on a lead 🤣

And I’m sure they’d be horrified if their owner tried to make them wear a coat outside just because it was a bit cold or it was raining like dog owners do.

Cats are far more streetwise and resilient to the world than dogs are which is why they’re happy to roam and independent enough to enjoy it.

Most cat owners allow their cats to roam because this is what the cats' instints tell them to do. Some indoor cats may be happy never to go outside, but in my experience most are desperate to get out. My local FB is full of missing indoor cats who have seized the opportunity and escaped. Of course, the prospects of these runaway indoor cats are poor because they haven't gradually built up their experience of and exposure to the outside world in the way that indoor/outdoor cats do and they are often very frightened and don't know how to find their way home.

Do you know any cat owners in the USA, OP? A large proportion of American cats are indoors-only, because of coyotes etc - but these indoor cats have high rates of behavioural problems such as aggression to their owners. For this reason, many American cats are declawed (a horrible operation which actually involves the surgical removal of the furthest section of each toe - not just the claw itself).

I live in a quiet road. My cat goes in and out as she likes during the day, although I do keep her in overnight. There is a slight risk to her going out, but I feel that the benefits to her physical and mental health outweigh the risks. I would no more keep my cat in the house "for her own safety" than I would keep my kids in all the time for their own safety either.

I have a primitive breed of hunting dog who is also not especially domesticated. I have to take him into our garden on a leash in case the many neighbourhood cats are visiting because he will 100% kill them. I'm not sure the "instincts" argument would fly with the cat owners and I don't want to find out.