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.
- Cats can get hit at any time of day or night, on busy roads or calm roads. As the author of this study says:
The only way to truly eliminate the risk of a cat being involved in an RTA [road traffic accident] is to keep them exclusively indoors. [...] An indoor only lifestyle would not only remove the risk of an RTA, but would also protect cats from injuries resulting from fighting with cats from other households, as well as some forms of infectious diseases.
By the way, here is something sad about studies of cats hit by cars: they likely under report the numbers of cats hit by cars because every time there's a study like this, there are some cats that go missing during the course of the study. You might hope that they got picked up and taken indoors by someone who cares about them more than the people who let them wander, but it seems unlikely. Many of them are probably killed by cars or predators or infections and not even the researchers studying their deaths know what happened to them.
Predators
Cats are an easy meal for predators. They are killed by foxes, coyotes, and domestic dogs. They're eaten by cougars and killed by bobcats. They can even be at risk of attacks from hawks and owls in some circumstances. I'm going to focus on coyotes, because next to cars, coyotes are the major threat to cats in my neighborhood (as in: I have seen coyotes in my yard hunting for cats and heard it when they're successful).
- 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."
Poisoning
I would like to start this section by noting that intentional human poisonings of cats, though rare, do happen. There is even a case of a bird conservation researcher attempting to poison food left out for a feral cat colony. I absolutely positively do not condone the poisoning of outdoor or feral cats for a number of reasons, not the least of which is how cruel it is to slowly kill an animal with poison.
That's a huge part of why I think you should keep your fucking cat inside. It's shitty that your cat might someday die of renal failure because you let it outside and it drank water out of a puddle that had pesticide runoff or antifreeze in it.
- Cats can be poisoned by all manner of things, and it's harder to treat a poisoning if you don't know what your cat has ingested. In a German study of 166 cats that were poisoned, 83 of the cats had outdoor access and more than half of the cats with outdoor access showed symptoms of poisoning after returning from the outdoors.
- Ethylene Glycol (a component of antifreeze) is a common way that outdoor cats poison themselves. It's a bad way to die.
- Poisoned rodent bait is meant to be appealing to rodents. Sometimes this means it's also appealing to cats and dogs, and absolutely can kill them. You can prevent your cat from eating rat poison by keeping your cat inside.
- Many cats that are poisoned survive the poisoning if they are treated in time, unfortunately outdoor cats may choose to hide under a porch or find a quiet place when ill and will not receive treatment in time to save their lives.
- Poisons don't have to be manmade to kill your cat. There are tons of plants that are toxic to cats, including lilies, which can kill a cat with only a tiny bit of pollen in a matter of hours. You may keep your yard lily-free for your cat, but do your neighbors?
Disease
Putting aside all the communicable diseases and parasites your cat is exposed to by being outdoors, being outdoors makes it significantly harder for you to monitor and address common cat ailments. Cats are extremely susceptible to renal disorders. The primary way that people notice that their cat is having a renal issue is through noticing a change in toileting habits or appetite. It's hard to say if your cat is eating less or urinating less or drinking less water if you don't know all of your cat's eating, drinking, or toileting habits because it spends a significant amount of time in an environment that you can't control. If you have an outdoor cat and your vet asks you if their diet has changed before the onset of symptoms, what do you say? How would you know? Is the cat getting fed at three houses? Is the cat eating kitten food left out by a neighbor and developing pancreatitis? Is your cat sneezing because it has a cold or because it inhaled a foxtail? That's really difficult to say if your cat spends time outdoors, but you'd better hope you guess right because inhaling a foxtail can kill your cat.
Communicable Diseases
- The primary mode of transmission of Feline Leukemia and Feline Immunodeficiency Virus is biting.
- Shared outdoor feeding and watering stations (which are often set up for maintenance of feral colonies but which your owned outdoor cat may visit) can lead to transmission of respiratory and salivary spread viruses, such as influenza and rabies.
- Cats can contract bird flu by consuming infected birds and can then spread bird flu to other cats and dogs.
- New and emergent variations of parvovirus.
- [
Harms your Outdoor Cat can do to the Environment
Kill Animals
Look, there are a million studies on this and outdoor cat advocates hate them all. That's the reason that I've linked the Nature study that they're all going to dismiss but I'm not going to talk about it in depth. The case study on fairy terns and the retrospective analysis from West Virginia are very specific, limited in scope, well-evidenced, and can reasonably be extrapolated to other situations. So even if you dismiss the Nature study, hopefully you can recognize that a decade of veterinary records from a wildlife rescue and a conservation study of a threatened species which used trail cameras and direct observation are pretty good evidence that cats are a threat to wildlife.
- 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.
Carry Rabies
Rabies is my personal nightmare. It is an absolutely terrifying disease and in the US we have worked a near miracle in reducing rabies in canine populations. We haven't done the same thing with cats and it's largely due to the way that people view cats as more "wild" and think that cats should be allowed to roam. That attitude is why feral cat colonies thrive, and it certainly isn't helped by the fact that rabies vaccination is not required for owned cats in every state. Many people let their cat's vaccination lapse in a way that they would never do for their dog, or never get the cat vaccinated in the first place, and as such cats are a vector for rabies. This is in addition to the fact that outdoor feeding stations for cats may be a transmission vector because they are frequently used opportunistically by other rabies reservoir species (skunks, foxes).
Feline and Canine Rabies in New York State, USA
Since the control of canine rabies in the United States, cats have become the most common domestic animal to contract rabies and the fifth most common species after bats, raccoons, skunks, and foxes. Since 1988, the number of rabid cats diagnosed with rabies in the US annually has surpassed the number of rabid dogs.
[...]
Between 2004 and 2018, cats testing positive for rabies in the US ranged from 241 to 319 cases annually. A review found that 44% and 32% of individuals in Pennsylvania and New York, who received post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) did so following an exposure to a cat.
[...]
Cat owners specifically underestimate their pets’ risk for rabies despite their vulnerability to terrestrial rabies variants, especially in urban centers. In 2017, of the 293 specimens submitted from the five boroughs of New York City, 78 were cats suspected of having rabies, second only to 104 raccoons. Of those 78 cats, 2 were positive and infected with RRV. Additionally, 133 raccoons were infected with rabies following an outbreak in Central Park in 2009, demonstrating the transmission potential in major metropolitan centers. The public must be reminded that rabies exists in this urban setting and transmission to unvaccinated or under-vaccinated pets is possible.
- Here is a nightmare case study of a rabies-infected, semi-feral cat that was adopted by a family that moved across three states to a state free of terrestrial rabies.
Rabies Prevention and Management of Cats in the Context of Trap–Neuter–Vaccinate–Release Programmes
Throughout the world, dogs are the rabies reservoir of greatest human health concern, causing 99% of human infections. In the United States, however, the canine rabies virus variants have been recently eliminated, and, as such, dogs are now a vector species for wildlife rabies instead of a reservoir. In 2010, 303 rabid cats were reported through national surveillance, compared with only 69 dogs. This 4-fold difference is in sharp contrast to the pattern reported in 1946 (prior to mass vaccination of dogs), when 8384 rabid dogs were reported rabid compared with only 455 cats. The dramatic decline in dog rabies from over 8000 cases a year to fewer than a hundred was accomplished through policies that promote mass vaccination coverage and control of strays, but adherence to these policies appears limited for cats. Legislation reflects this disparity; canine rabies vaccination is required by 38 states, but only 30 states require cats to be vaccinated. Because control tactics for cats are less emphasized, the number of reported rabies cases in cats has not declined in the same way as it has in dogs.
- In New Hampshire in 1994, the largest ever campaign of Rabies Post Exposure Prophylaxis was undertaken; 665 people needed rabies prevention care as the result of one rabid kitten, which was exposed to rabies through contact with a raccoon, which it would not have had if the kitten was indoors. Keep your fucking cat inside.
Spread Disease
But My Cat Doesn't ...
Go in the Street
Eat Wildlife
Get in Fights
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.