I’d like to let my cats roam around outside, but it’s too dangerous. At some point, I’ll have a backyard and put a cat fence up. http://www.alleycat.org/document.doc?id=100 It’s harder to keep a cat in a backyard, but it can usually be done. Some cats are just too good at escaping though.
Huh cool! It’s too bad more people don’t seem to care about keeping their cats on their own property 
Just make sure you keep them away from the dude walking his duckling:
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I have no cat. I have no plans to get a cat.
But boy, I really want one of those.
Well, to be honest I care mostly about my cat’s safety. Preventing dead birdies is a nice bonus. I would care more about the dead birds if I lived somewhere like New Zealand. Around here, the biggest threat to birds is urban development and grackles.
Off topic- one of my cats likes walks. She has a harness and leash. As long as I don’t let her go under any bushes or cars, we’re good. If she gets under something, she thinks I can’t see and tries to get the harness off. I made a point of putting a harness on her when she was really little and distracting her with play. It also helps that she is an extremely social cat and that, when scared, she tends to bold to me instead of away. Of course, we walk where she wants to walk.
Well the link you posted earlier was quite reassuring and they do have cat trees and plenty of places to climb. Plus I let them out into the garden from time to time if I’m out there to supervise 
If you ask small children if they’d like to play with matches, drink anti-freeze or run around in traffic, I’m sure they’d have definite opinions. Your cat, however, does not understand the question being posed and obviously it isn’t cognizant of the trade-off being made - it just wants to go outside, which is neither good for the cat or anything else living out there. What you see the cat killing is the tip of the iceberg. They’re not mostly killing invasive/pest species, they’re killing everything - ground-nesting birds, reptiles, amphibians, baby birds of all sorts…
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My last kitty loved to spend all day in the backyard but he was so good about staying close that we never worried about him. Occasionally he’d sit in the neighbor’s flower bed but he always came running when we called. He was a good hunter and we did have to be diligent about keeping the bird feeders high up and out of reach. He did manage to kill a few and several times he’d bring them in still alive and we’d have a wild time playing catch & release. First cat that I ever had that I really did not worry about him being outside. He passed away last November and I buried him under his favorite tree.
Rebound kitty is far too jumpy to want to go outside. He just sits at the back screen door watching the birds go by. What a life!
My hypothetical “ask the cat” presupposes they’re competent to make the decision, and choose to live short but happy. Plenty of humans make the same decision, most obviously motorcyclists. Maybe where you are is filled with “ground-nesting birds, reptiles, amphibians” but I live in the city, not in some nature preserve recently turned into subdivisions. None of the above are making it here anyway. The wildlife we do have tend to be the badasses like coons and possums that the cats give proper respect to. And I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the local red tails chooses cat over rat for dinner sometimes. Carnivore emptor.
PS: both cats were rescued young by us, 11 & 9 years old now. They’re apparently street smart, even the one that seems dumb as a box of rocks.
This is because many timid USians keep full-size dogs, but only toy-size cats. Full-size cats tend to be bigger than full-size dogs.
Many parents would find this horrific to contemplate. But the few children who live like this and survive are people to be reckoned with. Or so I’ve heard…
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Which of course is total nonsense, since they’re not capable of understanding, much less answering the question, and if they were and could, there’s no guarantee they’d answer it that way. After all, one thing I can be certain about is that cats sure as hell don’t want to get hit by cars, savaged by dogs, etc. The hypothetical really exists to justify being an irresponsible pet owner, frankly. To justify not keeping a cat indoors - and entertained - because it’s too much work (and being an irresponsible cat owner is accepted behavior).
I live in the middle of a city (population aprox. 1 million) it’s hardly a fucking nature reserve. Of course there are birds and reptiles in cities; it’s ridiculous to assert otherwise. If you don’t see birds and reptiles, it’s because a) you aren’t paying attention, or b) the fucking cats have already killed them. Where I live there used to be a bigger variety of species, but some were locally driven to extinction thanks to an increase in the cat population. Cats are the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals in urban areas.
If they’re like many of the outdoor cats I know, the survivors are far more likely to be wandering around crippled by past car accidents. Having un-set broken limbs may not kill you, but it sure as hell doesn’t make you any stronger - Nietzsche was so full of it.
Nietzsche’s claim of “that which does not kill me” was no doubt overstated, and deserves some qualification.
At my previous residence in NYC, my flatmate’s cat was killed via hit-and-run even at a crosswalk.
There are innumerable things that neither kill me nor make me stronger.
@aeon, @wrecksdart, @neonflame, stop being reasonable and messing with my snark! I will extend my recommendation for elimination of all pet dogs to include all cats in kiwi-lands, OK?
@GilbertWham, @daneel, @OtherMichael now that’s more like it. Good work.
True story: there are a couple of supposedly indoor dogs that get loose regularly and come on to my property, that are large and aggressive. They are almost certainly going to end up in a shallow grave in the woods; it’s just a matter of time really. Hopefully nobody’s child will be maimed first. But the mountain lion that was seen at the end of my street at few years back? I’m completely unafraid of the big guy. He’s smart; he’s been around for at least a decade, and he stays away from humans, feeding on deer and stray dogs mostly. I consider him an upright citizen.
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Interesting. Paving 99% of the land surface had nothing to do with it? I forget people have differing ideas of “city”. I don’t consider a cluster of suburbs like most sunbelt towns to be real “city”.
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I used to live on a bus and travel around gypsy-stylee, and one of my compatriots had a cat that was, arguably, the most outside cat ever. Fucker used to fight staffies and hunt rabbits. Traveller cats. Don’t mess with them.
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Yeah, me too. No matter how many times I let myself get rickrolled, I’m still out of shape.
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