Do We Really Know That Cats Kill By The Billions? Not So Fast

[mike_c]

29. except that the basis for our argument is the happiness and welfare of the cats themselves....

Frankly, that's the ONLY argument that I'll ever make in favor of letting my cats outdoors.

We use a cat door. You know, one of those swingy plastic flaps. The point is that we don't put our cats outside-- we offer them a choice. That they choose to go out, even in the face of increased risk of predation and injury, tells me that access to the outside makes them happier. Yes, I'm aware of statistics showing increased longevity of strictly indoor cats, but when I close that cat door, my cats become anxious and unhappy. They urinate inappropriately (OK, some of them do that no matter what, LOL), and otherwise make their displeasure known.

Since they have a choice and are well fed in any event, they CAN choose to stay safe indoors and several rarely go outside, especially Merry who has deformed forefeet and isn't very mobile, and Pippin who is timid and risk averse. The elderly Siamese Grendel goes in and out as she chooses, but mostly chooses to snooze in the sun no matter which side of the door she's on. She hasn't any teeth left anyway, so she's arguably not a threat to any potential prey. Like Merry, Tygee (yes, that's how it's spelled) rarely uses the cat door, but she will go out on the back porch when we open the back door for her, and despite being overweight and elderly, I've seen her catch rodents. We have a wood rat problem in our outbuildings, so most prey we see are rodents. But we do find occasional piles of feathers at the foot of the bed. The male cats both spend significant amounts of time outside each day-- males don't care for one anothers' company much. Those two account for most of the hunting our cats perform, I think.

My point is that access to the outdoors is demonstrably important for my cats. I'm perfectly happy if they choose to remain indoors, and a couple pretty much always do. In the past there have been times when I couldn't let any of them out safely, and it obviously caused them stress and anxiety. As I've said elsewhere, my cats' happiness and welfare is way more important to me than that of their prey, for which I make no apology. I should also note that we live in a safe neighborhood-- no through traffic, people are cognizant that their neighbors have cats and they watch for them on the road, etc. Larger predators are the greatest threat, and increased likelihood of injury, of course. The latter has to be factored into cats' own choices, however. They're the ones taking the risks.

on edit-- of course, we also let the dogs outside. In fact, we PUT them outside every day. I think the same has to be said of increased likelihood of injury for outdoor dogs as has to be said for cats, but everyone simply acknowledges that canines kept indoors all the time are likely to be unhappy and depressed about it.