It’s not just about the safety of the cat. A pet owner who allows their animal free reign of the neighborhood is a pet owner who is not taking responsibility for their pet’s actions, whether that be killing other animals or shitting in other people’s gardens.
If you happen to live on a ranch or other large plot of private land your cat is unlikely to leave then go right ahead and let them roam, but otherwise pets should be contained somehow.
Is California an open cattery state?
Gosh, I wonder why the cat doesn’t like hanging out with the unhinged lunatics?
Yep. Even that of cats’ minders should be a reason to keep them inside.
Cats also get killed by other cats, dogs, and people - too often deliberately.
Some asshole stray beat up our fixed & vaccinated Very Sweet Boy, and gave him FIV. That means he can’t fight off illness, disease, nor infections as a cat w/a normal immune system can. Our vet said getting FIV is like losing 8 of their 9 lives, and it is very contagious. We keep ours inside now, and have far fewer worries.
Thanks very much for the condescension. 
Moor or less.
Zoo-do is a big deal in Seattle.
We tried composted human waste once…
…we tried it ONCE.
It was fine, I guess.
The reason human waste is a uniquely bad idea as compost for growing anything that humans might have contact with isn’t just because it stinks, it’s because human waste is full of human pathogens. Mark Watney gets away with in it The Martian because any pathogens in his poop are ones he already has (and because The Martian is fictional).
Leaving aside the damage the cat is doing (killing 270 million animals a year in the UK), the number one killer of cats in the US is cars, by far. It’s not really “sometimes” - outdoor cats live, on average, 2-5 years. Indoor cats live 10-20 years.
Every so often I read about a panic in a particular area of the UK that cats are being killed by some sicko (or by foxes), but upon closer examination it turns out they were all killed by cars (and then the remains sometimes partially eaten by foxes). Cats being killed by cars is so common people aren’t even aware of it unless foxes drag the corpses back.
They will have their revenge…
That statistic (I see that it’s often cited after a brief Google) comes from a single study from 1986 that also noted that 90% of the cats that were killed in car accidents were not neutered and therefore likely to wander further, and of all the cats killed by traffic during the study, only 20% were ever identified as owned cats, with the remaining 80% likely being stray or feral. In fact, there seem to have only ever been three studies on the subject, with the 1986 study being the latest, and none of them made a distinction between owned and feral cats in their statistics.
I think most people in the UK would think that keeping a cat indoors for its entire life was unspeakably cruel. 90% (coincidentally) of owned UK cats are outdoor cats but the life expectancy of a cat here is significantly higher than 5 years.
Granted, there isn’t much biodiversity left in the UK suburbs (and cat ownership is undoubtedly a contributor to that, but so is deforestation, green/brown belt clearance, and road construction) and so the prey available to outdoor cats is generally limited to common species, but the general consensus (at least among people that I know / have known) is: if you don’t have the space to get a cat, don’t get a cat.
I don’t currently have a garden and would not consider owning a cat or a dog as a result. If I lived in an area in which me having a cat or a dog would threaten endangered local wildlife, I would not own a cat or a dog. If I lived by a busy road that meant that I could not let a cat outdoors safely, I would not own a cat.
Owning a dog or a cat is not a right. If you can’t keep a cat in an environment in which it can roam freely and engage in its own instinctive hunting behaviour, you shouldn’t have a cat.
A problem being that (formerly) common species are increasingly not-so-common anymore - there are fucking huge decreases in population numbers going on right now (in, for example, birds), and cats are part of that cursed trend. I can say, without exaggeration, that here’s multiple ecological apocalypses going on right now, and although outdoor cats aren’t solely to blame, they are definitely not helping.
Cats don’t confine themselves to “their” gardens (as this video can attest…). If one feels that having an indoor cat is cruel… one shouldn’t have a cat.
Both “keeping a cat indoors is cruel” and “keeping a cat outdoors has an impact on local wildlife populations” can be simultaneously true.
It’s also fair to say that if you agree with one or both of these statements, you shouldn’t own a cat. Again, cat ownership is not a right.
What’s not fair to say, however, is that indoor ownership is the only ethical route to having a cat, because neither of these options has animal welfare at its core.
That’s just silly. I’ve known many happy indoor cats.
All animals have natural instincts but if a pet owner decided to let their dog or pig or alligator or whatever roam the neighborhood eating whatever it wanted and pooping wherever it felt like then most neighbors would think that pet owner was irresponsible at best and a sociopath at worst.
Your pet, your responsibility.
My point is that if you don’t think it’s okay to have an animal roaming the neighbourhood (and I can see why many think so) the answer is not to own a pet that will roam the neighbourhood, not “buy that alligator anyway because you want one but keep it in the bathtub.”
Okay, but your point is based on the false premise that keeping cats indoors is “unspeakably cruel.” It’s not.
Yeah. And it’s a very reductive mindset overall.
Most of us who have pet cats have rescue animals. I would only ever have indoor cats, and know I can create healthy, stimulating environments for them while protecting local wildlife, but it doesn’t even come down to just that.
These cats need homes. Keeping a cat in a healthy indoor home is better than a shelter and def better than getting drowned in a sack in the river. 
Most any animal will roam the neighborhood if it is allowed to do so.
Most pet owners find ways to provide happy stimulating lives for their animals without turning them loose on the rest of society or the local ecosystem.
