On Aug 13, 10:00*am, dgk wrote:

Cats that are outside will die sooner or later (not very insightful I
know since we all will die). But the odds of something bad happening
go up rather quickly once they are out of the house. The fencing makes
it a tolerable risk.- Hide quoted text -


I'm not agruing at all, just passing along my experience.

We've had more than a few cats over the years, 2 of which were free to
roam (FTR) the neighborhood. The first one was someone else's FTR cat
that simply decided he liked us better. We ended up taking care of him
for over 5 years until he passed away from some kind of poisoning. As
far as we know, he was about 12 at the time and as far as we know he
was a FTR cat for his entire life.

Our current cat is 9 and has been a FTR cat since we adopted her as a
kitten. She comes in the house for a "walk through" every now and
then, and spent more time inside this winter than any other year, but
for the most part, she's happy to be outside and sleep in the garage.
We were on vacation last week and you could tell how much she missed
us. She slept with us the first night we were home, which is something
that hasn't happened in the summer for many years. Since that night,
she's been back outside all day and night.

You mentioned "cute". The cute thing that our cat does is walk with us
when we walk the dogs. As we leave the house with the dogs, she'll
come out of the garage, or out from under a bush or car, and follow us
through the neighborhood. The neighbors love it!

Sometimes my wife likes to take our younger dog on longer walks, out
of the neighborhood and near busier streets. When this happens, we try
to locate the cat and bring her inside until my wife is out of sight
so that the cat won't follow her. When we can't find the cat, my wife
will keep checking as she walks and return home if the cat has
followed her. The she'll toss the cat inside and head back out.

As far as longevity, the last indoor cats we had lived to be about 18
years old. We raised them from newborns, feeding them with eye
droppers until they could take care of themselves. That's older than
our previous FTR cat lived, but obvioulsy I don't know about our
current cat yet. 18 does seem like like a long time for an FTR cat to
survive.