Is this irresponsible behavior?

[goobhen]

I have four cats that I keep in my house. (I wanted an chicken coop cat, DH said no) When I lived in town, I had neighborhood cats use my beautiful flower beds as their litter boxes. It was disgusting cleaning it out!! I keet my cats in, why can't others keep theirs in, or at least in their own yards? If a person keeps their cat's feces in their own yards, fine let them out. If you can't, why should someone else have your cats crap? People object to free-roaming dogs, why let your cats free-range?

 

[ladycrotalus]

I have 4 indoor cats. I believe that if you want an animal then you are responsible to keep it safe and healthy. Only 2 of my cats want out, and i put their harnesses on em and walk em.
I also bought a huge cat tree from spoilmykitty.com and they have loads of cat toys and i play with them daily.

When i was younger i had 2 cats that were indoor outdoor. Both lived to be 12. I believe they would have lived longer if they were indoors only.

 

[Chick_a_dee]

I don't think it's irresponsible, there have been outdoor cats for ages. Our cat is an indoor cat, but I've been toiling with the idea of putting him out for an hour or so in the summer on a lead to watch the birds...he loves the birds.

 

[OlliOlliOlli]

If you do let them out, PLEASE get them fixed. I am so sick of having to listen to cats fighting and yowling for a little somethin' somethin' at 2am...and my ravenously barking Labradors agree.

 

[Chick_a_dee]

Quote:
My cat is fixed, and my unfixed male dog keeps trying to err do him LOL ... Accio is NOT impressed.

 

[mrsengeseth]

Quote:
thanks he's my buddy!

 

[mrsengeseth]

I think another point might be that with ferel (spelled that wrong...) cats and all the diseases they can bring, one never can be 100% sure that they aren't spreading something to your cat by means of their droppings or such. I would worry about that as well as predators, cars, other people etc etc etc.

 

[enola]

There are two cats in my house, my cat, Eve, and my daughter's cat, Adam. They are inside cats because there is a cat killing dog in the neighborhood.

The dog's owner lets him out at night. So it is safe for me to take my two dogs for a walk in the daytime and I let the cats come along.

They are traffic wise, so we walk up the road to a trail in the woods. One dog is on a leash, one dog comes to me and sits down to wait for the occassional car to pass us. The cats walk in the woods beside the road. We are quite the sight walking along the country road.

When we return home, I feed them canned cat food. So, I guess I can say I have them trained to come in after the walk.

 

[gritsar]

I didn't read all the responses, but I think it depends on the cat and your living situation.
I brought Kitty home when she was a 3 week old feral orphan. She lived inside for 3 weeks and again for a couple of weeks after she was spayed. Other than that, she was an outside cat. We now keep her inside during the day so that my chickens can free range and put her out after I lock the chooks up for the night.
We live on 80 acres. Our driveway is about a 1/4 mile long and there are no other roads in or out of the place. The only traffic on our road is our vehicles, the mail carrier and a neighboring farmer coming sometimes to check on his cows.
In five, almost six years I have seen one stray dog on the place and he was easily chased off.
As a young kitten Kitty developed the habit of sleeping on our roof. In bad weather she sleeps in one of the outbuildings.
She is spayed, had all her shots, is well fed and loved.
I hardly think we are being irresponsible in letting her be an outside cat. Considering that I found her abadoned at my workplace, right next to a major highway I'd say Kitty has a good life.

 

[Elwar]

We used to have a dog and an indoor cat. The indoor cat was about 12 years old and had never been outside. We had a patio with a doggy door into a small fenced yard that the dog would go out. The cat didn't know how to go through the doggy door.

One day my wife found my dog playing with a coral snake...this was not good. We lived right by a greenway with lots of critters. Our vet suggested we get a cat to keep the snakes out of the yard. We knew that our indoor cat wouldn't do very well outside so we went to the humane society and bought a big "teenage" kitten full of energy. She used to play with the dog and was very smart, we taught her how to use the doggy door and instead of the litter box she'd go outside. She started growing and got huge. She learned how to climb the wooden fence and she'd go wandering a little bit before coming back when I'd call her.

One night she didn't come back. We looked all over and found her dead on the other side of the fence like she was trying to come back. I think that most likely she ran into the road and got hit...there were no scratches on her. We lived on a street that didn't get too much traffic so she probably didn't figure out cars yet.