To put my cars on leads?

[Bickdycicle]

We've recently had to move house by no choice of our own and have 2 cats. Our previous house was on a quite residential estate. The new house is on a main road.

My two cats have been indoors for 3 weeks now and are absolutely climbing the walls. They used to go out for the majority of the day and come in and sleep at night so as you can imagine hate being in all day.

I've been researching options about what to do with letting them out and have seen invisible fences but they seem so cruel and also are not proven to work.

AIBU to put them in a cat harness, the their leads to a fence and let them roam the (huge) garden? I'm running out of options here. They are like my children and I would never forgive myself if they got run over ☹

The title should read CATS!!!

What about something like Protectapet (cat proof fencing) for your garden? They could have the run of the garden and be outside but not able to get to the main road this way.

If they’ve got a huge garden they may not actually wander that far.

I live pretty close to a main road. Our cats have always avoided it and gone the other way.

I don’t think putting your cats on leads will work- surely given a taste of the outdoors they’ll struggle free of the harnesses?

I'm sure there are other companies but something like this?

www.beestonfencingcompany.co.uk/catprooffencing.htm

I did look at cat proof fencing but our whole garden is surrounded by bushes and not fences so it's going to cost a bomb to put fences all round and then put this fencing on top. I wish we could afford to do this as it would solve all our problems

If they have no idea of a main road then they will get mown down. Your option is the safest one

Definitely. It's way better than the alternative.

We've done this is the past when letting rescue cats out for the first time and it worked great. However our most recent two massively freaked out at the harness and almost knocked themselves out bucking around the room trying to get it off themselves before we could catch them and take it off. Basically it depends on the cat

What about an Egloo Cat run? (Think they are called that) I’ve seen the largest one on eBay before.

I wish we could afford to do this as it would solve all our problems

Can you afford to have your pets killed by a car though? Because that’s what is likely to happen. If cat proof fencing isn’t an option now I’d recommend a catio.

Forgot to type they can’t be left alone on a harness, even placid cats can wriggle out of them if spooked.

Our cat hated her harness. Her could also wriggle out from it. I'd be concerned about them getting tangled in the lead and getting strangled or something if they weren't supervised in it.

We are thinking about making a sort of cat run.

We had a cat run that worked fantastically! And the cats loved being able to sit in the fresh air in the sunshine

I don’t see what other option you have than to fence the garden, either that it you will have to live with the fact they could get run over as obviously they will have no road sense at all, I don’t see leads as a practical option as you can’t do this all the time, it’s just not workable long term.