Keep Your Fucking Cat Inside

I am stridently anti outdoor cat. If you want your cat to get time outside, build it a catio or train it to walk on a leash. Cats being outdoors and allowed to wander is dangerous to the cats, humans, and other animals. Cats are an invasive species that make wonderful pets but should under no circumstances be allowed to wander freely.

Keeping an outdoor cat is neglectful of your cat. Feeding a feral colony without providing veterinary care, spay/neuter, and vaccination is animal abuse.

Dangers to your Outdoor Cat

House cats are a domesticated species. They are not a wild animal, and while they may resemble some wild cats they are not the same. Your cat is not adapted to live a life outdoors, it is not adapted to live a life outdoors in your area, and it will not just 'be okay' or 'figure it out.' There are many things that pose a risk to your outdoor cat, and you can avoid those risks by keeping your cat indoors.

Other Cats

This page exists because someone was stupid enough to comment on my blog that "cats mostly don't fight to the death." And is true that cats rarely will kill one another with traumatic injuries during the course of a fight. However it is also true that cat bites are the primary way that Feline Immunodeficiency Virus is spread, that cats who fight are often subject to abscessed wounds because of the specific structure and bacteria of cats' mouths.

• Cat fights can cause sepsis, which killed one third of cats in a study about identifying and treating it.
• Abscesses can occur in the brain, and though this is rare, it is because adult cats fighting sometimes bite so hard that they can leave tooth fragments in their opponents' skull. Some fun findings from these studies show that cats who are treated quickly for abscesses in their brains often recover full neurological function, when they survive, so I hope Mr. Whiskers is able to make it home in time for you to take him to the vet.
• It can often be difficult to identify injuries from cat fights for up to a week after the fight, which is why some vets have worked together to make a wound diagram that shows the kind of harm that cats are likely to do to one another in a fight. The long-term consequences include things like "their pleural cavity filling with pus" and "loss of extremities," so this paper is not for the squeamish.

Thankfully, you can significantly reduce the risk that other cats pose to your cat by keeping your fucking cat inside.

Cars

Your cat is not smart enough to outsmart a car. Your cat is not fast enough to outrun a car. Your cat almost certainly goes in the street if you let it outside. I live next to someone who feeds a feral colony of cats. The street we live on is supposed to have a 25mph speed limit, but people zoom down it doing 50 all the time. You have no idea how frequently I hear feral cats getting hit by cars. We have a whole secondary ecosystem of crows who know that they can usually find fresh roadkill on our street because of all the cats that get hit.

• Getting hit by cars is one of the main reasons cats require medical treatment.
• Most cats that get hit by cars die.

Predators

• Coyotes would love nothing more than to eat your outdoor cat.
• Seriously your sweet little Snowball is a gourmet treat for a coyote.
• Whether in groups or alone, coyotes eat cats and are very successful cat hunters. The authors of this study are quite clear on how to prevent coyotes from eating your cat: "Pet safety is a concern relating to urban coyotes but is easy to alleviate by keeping pets indoors."

Harms your Outdoor Cat can do to the Environment

Kill Animals

• Two to three cats predating on the nesting site of a threatened species of terns led to the complete reproductive failure of the colony and the deaths of six mating adults, threatening not only the individual birds but the entire population of the species in spite of human attempts to rehabilitate the Tern population.

• A retrospective analysis of 10 years of admissions to an animal rehabilitation center show cats as a major cause for admission for mammals and birds, and a major cause of mortality for admitted animals which received veterinary care.

• Both owned and unowned cats kill an absolutely absurd number of birds and mammals annually.

But My Cat Doesn't ...

Go in the Street

• Yes they do.
• Sometimes they explore storm drains too.

Eat Wildlife

• Yes they do.

I live in England so this doesn't apply to me, our outdoor cats are perfectly safe

You stupid motherfuckers are so goddamned dense that you'd rather make up a serial killer of cats than acknowledge the fact that foxes and cars are out to get Mr. Biscuits.

Addressing the Bad Science of Outdoor Cat Advocates

Section under construction so I don't start screaming.

The most common way that outdoor cat advocates counter studies into the ecological impacts of outdoor cats is to say "nuh-uh" and cover their ears. This is a very deep deep-dive and I need to gather my patience for it.