Declawed cats are never OK. It’s an inherently cruel procedure.
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I guess it’s indoor or leashes, then. 
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I don’t disagree with the risks to the cat, but their environmental impact is different in different places. Domestic cats were only introduced in North America within the last four hundred years and their population has only continued to grow. That’s not the case everywhere. Some small cat species are native to just about every part of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Including big parts of the British isles.
I am in Oregon, and I keep my cats indoors with some outdoor, supervised leash time. I am not in any way advocating for house cats to have those opportunities here. I went to great trouble and expense to have a feral mother on my in-laws property desexed and I adopted all three of her kittens, who you would never know spent the first two months of their lives outside.
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Perhaps then dogs to catch the cats?
Greetings fellow Oregonian! [insert secret handshake here]
I deeply wish all cat owners were as responsible as you. I live in an exurban neighborhood, with coyotes and eagles and hawks, etc. I would be surprised if we didn’t have cougars moving through our green corridor. We have a steady stream of “missing cat” posters popping up on posts in our neighborhood common space from folks who move in and let their cat wander. And, ugh, sometimes neighborhood kids find the results. Not good for anyone, but especially the poor kittehs.
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Yep… my cat is a fully indoor cat, and she does well enough just looking at the critters outside from the window. She enjoys it, the critter outside is safe from her (though not the coyotes in the back yard, likely) and she gets some exercise running from window to window looking at the wildlife outside… Plus, we don’t have to worry about ticks, fleas, cars, coyotes, etc…
I do agree that leashing is a pretty good idea, as @Dasylupe does with her kittehs… But our cat has been fine inside for much of her life.
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Hmmm…
A story about needless animal cruelty and the responding sophomoric references to a weak-ass “joke” that would violate the terms if it were posted; not “mostly wonderful.”
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Why do you hate humor, @Melizmatic… /s
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I was considering getting a library cat, but the library dogs might make it unsettled. Cats are nervous creatures. Really easily unsettled and nervous.
Shaving one would likely make it ill from stress.
Don’t do it.
Citation needed on that. Feral cats maybe.
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Gladly. There are multiple studies and multiple sources.
Here’s a good overview scientific article with references that you can dive into for more detail:
These are NOT feral cats; they are domestic cats with homes. But because of interaction with feral cats, every disease feral cats have, outdoor domestic cats get.
The study that gets cited alot was revised with newer data to exclude kittens that fail to survive past 12 months, which puts the longevity at 4.7 years for females and 3.7 years for males. Note that while early mortality gets excluded in the update, that also excludes many valid environmental causes of death, such as disease spreading from feral cats and prey to parent cats to kittens.
Direct PlosOne link to study:
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Number 46
From that study
Another interesting finding was that indoor/outdoor cats did not have a significantly shorter lifespan than indoor-only cats. Outdoor-only cats did have a shorter lifespan.
Supports @robertmckenna 's point
I’m also in a semi-rural area with a lot of wildlife. Trust me, I know the feeling. Whenever I see a post on Facebook for a missing cat and they just say “she didn’t come home last night like she usually does.” I’m like, dang. Kind of the risk you take letting them roam.
My in-laws are older than my own parents and definitely have a different mentality about animals. When they were growing up, cats just sort of came and went all the time, never sticking around for very long at all. So when yet another feral gave birth in the greenhouse he was just kind of like, oh neat, kittens! 
I was like, oh yes, that’s very interesting. Tell me all about it while I pick up our live trap from my mom’s place.
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Does it though? What is an indoor-outdoor cat (more like @Dasylupe’s?) vs fully outdoor cat? I have two neighbors who have “indoor-outdoor” cats, but they only venture into their yard, my yard, and one other yard, all fenced areas. They don’t have much if any exposure to other cats other than each other and don’t have exposure to predators.
Also, if you look at the diseases as causes of death, other than cancer they are all communicable diseases carried primarily by feral cats and wild animals like opossum, raccoons, rats, etc. Those causes of death are 100% due to outdoor exposure to those populations.
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It’s not “my link.” It was fullfilling @robertmckenna’s request for a citation to back up the 2-5 years figure. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of veterinary and animal advocacy sites that cite those figures but I prefer scientific articles that could back it up. Instead, it feels like I’m being penalized for providing a quality resource instead of the easy ones.
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Okay, I refer back to No 46 on the endless arguments list and bow out of pointless back-and-forth.
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