On Tue, 14 Aug 2012 08:14:59 -0400, dgk wrote:

On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 07:34:36 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

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.
...

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.

Only one of my indoor cats made it past 16, so 18 is quite good. It
depends on the area to some degree. I had friends who were living in
West Virginia on a pretty open meadow, and all the cats wandered
around. There were real predators and the roads were dirt so no one
drove fast. Of course there were real roads nearby but the cats pretty
much stayed in the meadow, which I guess is much more interesting for
them than concrete and asphalt.

I'd let all my cats roam in that circumstance, but living in NYC
they're lucky that they aren't stuck in an apartment 15 floors above
the street.


Oops, that as "NO real predators".

On Aug 15, 8:56*am, dgk wrote:
On Tue, 14 Aug 2012 08:14:59 -0400, dgk wrote:
On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 07:34:36 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

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.
...

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.

Only one of my indoor cats made it past 16, so 18 is quite good. It
depends on the area to some degree. I had friends who were living in
West Virginia on a pretty open meadow, and all the cats wandered
around. There were real predators and the roads were dirt so no one
drove fast. Of course there were real roads nearby but the cats pretty
much stayed in the meadow, which I guess is much more interesting for
them than concrete and asphalt.

I'd let all my cats roam in that circumstance, but living in NYC
they're lucky that they aren't stuck in an apartment 15 floors above
the street.

Oops, that as "NO real predators".- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Last night I watched my cat stalk something in the woods for about 10
minutes until it must have flown/scampered away.

After 10 minutes of crouching down and stealthily walking towards the
woods, she just sat up and started cleaning herself, like "Yep, that's
all I came out here for. Hunting something? No, not me. Just walked
over here to lick my paws, yep, that's all."

Liar!

DerbyDad03 wrote:

Last night I watched my cat stalk something in the woods for about 10
minutes until it must have flown/scampered away.

After 10 minutes of crouching down and stealthily walking towards the
woods, she just sat up and started cleaning herself, like "Yep, that's
all I came out here for. Hunting something? No, not me. Just walked
over here to lick my paws, yep, that's all."


Not long ago I saw a study reporting that feral cats (and I presume tame
ones) catch their prey every third pounce. Just imagine, only three leaps
away from a snack (lizard, bird, frog, grasshopper, mouse, mole, moth, baby
anything, and thousands of specific prey - not including opossums).

On Wed, 15 Aug 2012 15:06:30 -0500, "HeyBub"
wrote:

DerbyDad03 wrote:

Last night I watched my cat stalk something in the woods for about 10
minutes until it must have flown/scampered away.

After 10 minutes of crouching down and stealthily walking towards the
woods, she just sat up and started cleaning herself, like "Yep, that's
all I came out here for. Hunting something? No, not me. Just walked
over here to lick my paws, yep, that's all."


Not long ago I saw a study reporting that feral cats (and I presume tame
ones) catch their prey every third pounce. Just imagine, only three leaps
away from a snack (lizard, bird, frog, grasshopper, mouse, mole, moth, baby
anything, and thousands of specific prey - not including opossums).


On a hot August day a few years ago I was sitting upstairs when I
glance out into the hall and saw Nipsy and Espy sitting in the hallway
looking at something between them and I couldn't tell what it was but
it wasn't a bird. The backdoor was open and they were free to come and
go so whatever it was had just been carried in. Turns out it was a
baby possum - some mother possum had held a graduation and the kids
were scattering in the backyards.

I thought it was dead but picked it up with a paper towel and it
moved! So I took it downstairs and put it through the chain link fence
(so it was still a very small possum) into my neighbor's groundcover.