Tell me about having a house cat

[Silviasilvertoes]

I desperately miss having a feline familiar. We live next to a relatively busy road (rural but lorries).

It’s a big house so plenty of room to roam indoors.

How do you stop your house cat going out? Is it even possible? How do you make their lives interesting?

I’d be very happy with a rescue, in fact that’s the ideal.

This.

I think it's so incredibly cruel and selfish to have an 'indoor only' cat. Apart from a very few breeds like ragdolls who have no outdoor survival skills, it's so sad to see an animal made to fight against its instincts for his owners gratification just to have a pet.

Even the ones with medical needs ago will likely get killed outside, deserve at least a large Catio.

Realistically how is a catio beneficial aside from the fresh air? Cats can't hunt, or roam or do anything in them. Just another marketing disaster.

But would it be better to have a rescue that can’t go out as a house cat rather than leaving it in a shelter or having it put down?

@M340 but some don't want to go out?
I currently have two windows open, and my cat is sat on the bed, looking out the window
He sometimes sticks his head out

😂 The cat’s nature makes a difference, of course. We had a farm cat who adopted us as a kitten who was an absolute menace for bringing in all sorts of live offerings and would roam two fields away. But we’ve had other cats who barely go beyond the patio.

I think he's spent too long reading the cosy winter threads on here
His face is why the fuck would I want to go out, human, food and comfy bed inside

When it's warm he will lie on the grass next to me if I'm sunbathing and greet people passing by. If I go in, he goes in

You know in other countries, cats are indoors only. Some parts of Australia have 24/7 cat curfew etc.

Cats adjust just fine, as did the domestication of dogs. My partner said people just used to open the door and let their dogs out to roam all day in his childhood.

Obviously it doesn't apply to all cats but if a cat is a rescue, it isn't out roaming and likely to have been at the centre for a long time and used to being indoors/catio. OP will know what is right for their cat when they get it.

I think it depends on the cat so probably better to get an older cat that it’s known is happy inside. I’ve got two cats (born in a barn) who I put out every morning for the day and they spend most of day sat outside the back door waiting to come back in. They have a range of outbuildings and about 3 acres to patrol but they don’t.

I live next to a major A road, literally backing on, my cat just doesn't go on it causes he can hear.

It's quiet roads that are the danger! Cats get cocky and don't pay attention,

Very busy roads are fine,

Get an outdoor cat, it will be much happier and so will you. Indoor cats are miserable and bored unless they are daft as brushes. Which some are of course.

This is exactly the problem we have. We live on an A road in a very rural Welsh town, so there’s traffic morning and evening, then nothing in between except timber lorries 😬 It might be different if it was busy the whole time but it’s very sporadic. Our neighbours have a three legged cat and that would break my heart.

What rubbish!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with my ( and I strongly believe others) cats condition.
The spare bedroom window is always open on a child lock so he can get as much fresh air as he wants.
He has plenty of toys and scratching post.
How would you feel if knowingly let my aggressive cat out and he attacked yours resulting in the need for vets treatment .
Plus it means he doesn't crap in other people's gardens or kill birds .

That dounds like it may be feasible, I really want mine to be attached to the side of my house so I can have the kitchen door open and he can come and go as he pleases.

I will look at aviary cages / wire , thanks.

I’m not completely decided, I think I’ll talk to
a couple of rescues and see what they say. We have acres of parkland to the rear of the house but you can guarantee the cat will want to go to the churchyard over the road, that’s how our neighbours’ cat was hit.

Have a chat, they will know the cats well
They told me mine used to only have a walk round the garden in the evening and that's all he ever does now, he's very much a stay with my human cat!

We have a reasonable sized garden that’s securely fenced, so if they had a cat that couldn’t jump…

Our house cat now 11yrs old whilst offered the opportunity to explore outside has never ventured much further than the patio. We are convinced her eyesight isnt the hottest so probably best scenario all round.

Happy and healthy girl; Queen of the House. Also makes going away easier as we opt for a cat sitter.

I adopted 2 ex-feral cats, and keeping them indoors only was a condition of the adoption as there was a good chance they would go feral again. As it happens, it turns out Boycat was one of the thickest cats on the planet (suspected brain damage from an accident before he was trapped by the rescue) and wouldn't survive 5 minutes in his own back garden. Flat cats on windows, and similar on the patio doors, Girlcat (reasonably adventurous) did try once to see whether she could get the flat cats off but never tried again, both completely contented and according to the vet in "perfect" condition. After sadly losing Boycat to ckd, I got Girlcat a new companion who had been a stray in dreadful condition when he was rescued. He is now in superb condition as well, and they get quite enough exercise chasing each other round the house (often at 4am), and companionship when they sleep together.

I'd got them all with the intention of indoor only cats for a number of reasons. Had too many friends heartbroken by losing cats to cars, anti-freeze, or evil little bastard kids who think torturing a cat is good fun - think things like tying a firework to their tails, or tying their legs together with zip ties or bailing string. I've seen teenagers swerving across the road in their cars to try to hit a passing cat before now as well.

Where on earth do you live? That’s shocking 💔

North Kent. There are some very nice areas, and some very not nice areas. They caught teens in Swanley Park trying to catapult a moorhen off her next on the boating pond, there have been people using terriers to hunt & kill local wildlife. But you get that kind of behaviour in just about any area where there's high levels of poverty and deprivation I'm afraid.

Near Bromley, a "naice" area, there were young men who crashed their car through a gate into a field & drove round chasing the horses there until they hit one & broke it's leg, had to be PTS. Sadly there are some pretty and twisted people in many parts of the country, Supersimkin can tell you about the local yob who threw one of her cats off a high balcony for example (luckily cat wasn't badly hurt).

Ah, yes. I grew up in Sussex and DM was a C&F social worker in Kent. It was quite the revelation. I don’t even want to think about what I’d want to do if someone did that to my cat.

It sounds like it's not as common to have indoor only cats in the UK as it is in Australia.

A lot of rescues here will only home if they can be indoor only or access to a catio.

One of my girls is pure white - she's at risk for skin cancer so I only give her access to a netted undercover balcony. She was a stray and rescued while pregnant at only 9 months. My other girl is her daughter born in the rescue so never been outside.

Of the two my white girl while loving the balcony has shown zero interest in going out.

I do think a lot of it is down to personality rather than owners necessarily doing anything special.

We had indoor cats for years and they were fine - never tried to escape or had any fights, then the kitten turned one and it was like a switch flipped - they started fighting, two of them were over-grooming and one ended up in the vets with stress.

The vet strongly recommended they started having access to the outside before one of them either got badly injured or unwell - so we did, and all our problems vanished quite literally overnight.

Up until then I was a huge advocate of indoor cats but now I've realised it genuinely does depend on the individual.

There have also been lots of threads on here over the years about indoor cats with behavioural issues and I do wonder how many of them would improve if the cats in question had the ability to act more naturally.

Jackson Galaxy interests me as he's a huge advocate for indoor cats but then massively goes out of his way to make the indoors as "outdoorsy" possible - which kind of tells me that the knows the benefits of roaming and hunting but just understands that it comes with risk.

Having seen how happy roaming makes my cats, I could never keep them indoors again - if they choose it of their own free will that's different, of course.

I think this is it in a nutshell. I’ll have to see if I can find a cat that wants to be a house cat. I’m not in a hurry and I’d travel across the country for the right one, so I’ll speak to some rescue centres and see what happens.

If there was any outdoor space available that wasn't a motorway, then I'd be letting the cat out. You say it's rural so there must be loads of outdoor areas that are quiet and safe?
I had a couple of cats I let out into the road and they were fine. We live near a main road but they would never go near it during the day. They're pretty sensible creatures.
The only time I'd have an indoor is if I lived in a massive tower block. I'd say it should really be a last resort to keep them in. They'll be staring out and crying for the outdoors if they can see they can actually access it.