wants to be an outdoor cat

[dragonyphoenix]

The new roomie has completely moved in. She's wigging because the rug cleaners knocked into the screen door and now it won't close properly. She's terrified her cat will get out. Since every cat I've ever owned as gone outdoors, it's hard for me to understand why she's so upset. Also, I'm not sure how having a screen door that closes will keep the cat in. We'd have to be think as paper to consistently have at least one door closed at all times. Plus the times I've been at her old apartment, when the cat got out of the apartment and into the hallway, he stopped just outside the door (although that doesn't mean I didn't miss times when he did make a real dash for it).

I haven't raised those thoughts with her. No need to make her more anxious.

Comments

[rahirah]

We used to let our cats go out, but the combination of traffic, stray dogs, and feral cats with unknown diseases in our neighborhood made us change our minds. The cats we've owned since making the change do escape sometimes, but overall they're indoor only... and they've all lived twice or three times as long as our indoor/outdoor cats, who tended to disappear mysteriously after a few years. I don't panic when they escape, but there really are good reasons to keep them in.

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid people just let their cats out. Nowadays I tend to go with what the cats are used to. I let my last two cats out but they were so old they would mostly only go out when I was there with them. And yeah, there used to be a coyote in our neighborhood and we saw foxes as recently as last year so there are good reasons to keep the cat in.