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other cat communities midwest.social cats
Nope! Just decided to be a disappearing asshole for 36 hours and come back like nothing happened.
edit: thanks to all for the different perspectives. he is fixed, has all of his shots, and has his own temperature contolled kitty condo (aka the laundry room) that we put him into every night. we have a pretty good network of neighbors and pieced together his activities via security cameras. he's a mouser for sure and that is his job until he decides to retire.
I'm glad the fool is ok.
But if you allow the cat outside, don't. Free-roaming cats, statistically, will die somewhere out there, and live a much shorter life.
Cats are also an invasive species basically everywhere. A cat outdoors, off a leash, is a danger to itself and everything around it.
Transitioning an outdoor cat to indoor life is tricky, it's basically been allowed to be a part-time wild animal, so becoming full-time pet can be a challenge. But it can be done, though it will require lots of actual playing with the cat to replace the entertainment it has been going outside to get.
But they will live a longer life, with fewer health risks. And they will learn to come to you for play and/or cuddles, instead of killing time by murdering the wildlife and risking their own in fights/traffic.
No one considers an unleashed dog outside on its own ok. Cats were never any different.
Do you have any resources on the how for transitioning?
Ours is indoor/outdoor. We do a lot to mitigate the risks, but I'd love to have an option to slowly bring him in.
For my cats we were lucky enough to live somewhere that had very little traffic at the time, so we'd let the cats out only when we were out.
Then slowly let them out, but only in the garden area, and then only with a leash. Eventually we stopped letting them out. We'd distract them before opening doors.
I don't have personal experience of taking an outdoor cat indoors. It might be worth talking to a cat behaviourist if there's something in particular that's causing trouble.
But based on what I know, I'd imagine outdoor cats have the option to hunt whenever they feel like it, and have the option to be alone whenever they feel like it, and taking those two things away might be the main source of discomfort for an ex-outdoor cat.
It's important that a cat have its needs met, and so in your home there should be secluded/hidden/out of reach places for a cat to go and be in. You likely already have this covered, but the point is to give the cat the option to retreat and disappear from constant company.
Play, which has to replace hunting, is a little different. I keep some hard plastic too large to eat toys out at all times, but these only entertain when my boy is extremely wound up. Most of the time for it to be engaging, he needs to be playing "against" me pretending to be prey with a wand toy or laser pointer. Bouncing balls with their unpredictable movement also work really well, but he will chew and swallow those so the play has to be supervised.
I also keep sticks of matatabi (a plant with the same compounds in it as catnip) for him to chew. They're not toys, but another thing for him to do.
I also never cover the windows completely, just so he can see outside. He likes people-watching. Yet more for him to do.
When he wants to play, he will let me know, there's a certain meow, or he'll stare at me while sitting next to drawer with the toys.
So maybe try playing with your cat instead of letting it outside? Basically addressing the probable cause for it wanting to head out in the first place, which is boredom. Maintain as many things for it to use to kill time as you can, and help with it personally whenever you can be asked.
Also it doesn't take that much. Even outdoors, cats will doze most of time, they sleep several hours more each day than us.
If it seems like your cat doesn't like playing with you, look up videos of people playing with their cat. Every cat has a predators instinct, but the way to entice with play can be extremely varied. Mine goes crazy for the fluffy ball of a wand toy sloowly being pulled behind and corner and going out of sight, (like a mouse or something trying to sneak away) but won't give shit if I just wave it around in front of him.
In my experience, the best ways to modify behaviour have been changing something he wants to do so that it's unpleasant to do (sticky tape on furniture he likes to scratch, setting a metal measuring cup atop the toilet paper so it comes down clattering to the floor if he unrolls it), or distracting with play (making the cat stop what it's doing by starting a play session). A cat doesn't understand punishment, but if you change something so that an obvious consequence that a cat won't like occurs when they do something you want them to stop, they will quickly learn.
The note about the unleashed is not true in many countries.
Such as?
Where in the world, can you let a cat outside unsupervised, and have there be zero chance of it finding a way to kill something, get killed, or catch a disease/parasite?
Sorry, the word "dog" got lost. What I meant was there were countries where you'd find unleashed dogs everywhere and nobody cares.
You could replace the word "cat" with "human" in your comment and it'd make much more sense.
Where I live, cats provide an invaluable service of keeping pests away. So until they start meowing about unionizing I'll let them roam free, with the dogs.
The difference between a cat and a human is that you can teach the human stuff like, "don't kill birds for fun", or "pick up trash", etc. Humans are shit, but we're smart enough to know when we went too far and stop. Not that we always actually do.
Lets not pretend that every cat owner in New York letting them outside and onto the streets is a good idea. That would be a lot of cats.
It's nice that you can employ cats for their original domesticated purpose, but what does that change? You're a minority among minorities. In most places everyone letting their cats outside would be more like you having a literal thousand of them to take care of pests in the same amount of land that you use whatever amount you have now for.
And even then the cat is still an invasive species, unneutered/unspayed, one too many of them will get you a feral population no local ecology can handle, so stay on top of it.
I'd actually be interested to know what would happen in the new York situation, there is probably enough rats to sustain this new cat population comfortably.
I'm not against getting cats spayed/neutered, or having cats soly indoors, I'm not sure where that came from? It's just irksome when people insist on locking them up, especially unsolicited.
"One too many, no local ecology can handle"...Are you implying we are on verge of a stray cat doomsday? Lots of countries have feral cats (and dogs),and while not ideal, they haven't collapsed society (yet).
Regardless, if you are able to sort out some other issues, like global warming, or micro plastics first, I'll wholeheartedly listen about the cat apocalypse, deal?
Whataboutism? Really? People aren't allowed to care about multiple problems, but only the big ones first? I'm frankly insulted that you'd attempt such a bad faith arguing tactic, as if you'd not immediately get called on it. Fuck you, no deal.
And yes, cats breed fast. I didn't say they'd collapse society, I said ecologies. That's something they have already done in many places around the world where feral cat populations got out of control.
In any densely populated area, you just need two idiots with fertile cats letting them outside for the area to soon have a problem. How exactly does things being under control where you live change that simple truth? Letting cats outside cannot remain the default way of thinking.
Your uneducated guesses on New Yorks cat population vs rat population, is hilarious. Stop seeing the world through your narrow anecdotes, and look this shit up.
And nevermind all that... Unsolicited? Statistically certain health issues and early death isn't enough of a reason for you?
Whoa, I didn't make up the ridiculous new York cat doomsday story, chill out. I didn't realize in your head this was a (likely?) possibility, I'd assumed common sense which is my bad. I though it was more of a "XKCD what if" question.
You're accusing me of whatabouism?! Your argument is literally "WHAT ABOUT if everyone in new York let their cats out???" Im flabbergasted. You can focus on whatever issues you want, I'm just saying cats are pretty low on my list.
And yes, unsolicited - unless I greatly missunderstood OPs intentions for the post. At least I've learned that being indoors is statistically safer than being outdoors though, so thank you for that insight.
Making up a scenario to illustrate a point is not whataboutism. I do not consider it likely, the idea was to merely illustrate that in high density areas (you know, where most of humanity lives), the number of cats is such that allowing them all outside is simply not an option.
And if solicited advice is the only advice we are allowed to give, how exactly are outdoor cat owners to be dealt with? Do we just sit around until they randomly look up how long their cats could be living?
We snuck our cat into our apartment skirting the lease. About 4 years in, they noticed our cat. We were given the ultimatum, pay $500 by the end of the week, or get rid of him by the end of the week. I was absolutely devistated, but we had no choice but to rehome him. We found a nice family across town to take him in. They would send us updates for about a week until he ran away.
About 6 or 7 months later, I'm watching TV with my wife at midnight, and I hear frantic meowing at the door. It was him!
The management company was in such disbelief, they waived the fee for us and he lived to be 12 years old. He passed away in my arms about 2 years ago. I'll never forget him.
I'm glad your void came home! A couple years ago our void disappeared and we panicked; we printed posters and put them all over the neighborhood and dropped them in mailboxes. A couple days later, we walk In and he slinks in the cat door like he was never gone.
I will say, he smelled musty, and we suspect he got trapped in a neighbor's garage. He disappeared Friday night, when somebody came home from work, and reappeared Sunday night.
Still nerve wracking though.
We lost ours for I wanna say 3 months. We had done everything, posters, nextdoor Facebook, craigslist, you name it. He was super old, and mostly an indoor cat at that point in his life. After a couple of months we just gave up on finding him. Then my wife gets a random text from this lady saying she thinks she found him. She goes on to say she found my wife's listing on lostmykitty.com which was a super random site someone told us to make a listing on, I was at work at the time n grabbed a box from the receiving area n cut a bunch of holes in it n headed to her house, but I was super doubtful that it was the same cat.
She was a solid mile or so away. I get there and sure enough, it was him. He smelled awful, and all his fur was matted to shit. My theory is my cat got scared and ran into or fell in a storm drain and got stuck because the lady's house was right next to the creek that those fed into. We had the vet check him out n she warned us that a lot of cats that go on similar journeys don't last long after because their kidneys go. He unfortunately was no exception. He made it another few months, but he had lost most of his weight, and he was in rough shape. We were super grateful that the lady found him and he got to spend his last days with us though.