Indoor vs Outdoor Cats: Pet behavior and owner responsibility

I don't have a pet, but agree on the whole expectations thing.

In terms of an equivalence with food-enjoyment-directed-killing, I may just load different value judgements onto my own meat eating. I get goods other than pleasure - convenient non-soy protein that doesn't taste like fucking chicken - from eating pork, but it's mostly about enhancing my gustatory pleasure at the cost of a fairly intelligent animal's suffering and death. Were I to kill, cleanly, for the pleasure of hunting, I could probably pick stupider animals who would suffer less. Hard to figure out the evil-to-pleasure ratio in advance.

Anybody who maunders as much as I do about food animal ethics should get with the program or at least be eat stupider animals, but I tend to think the only way the wider phenomenon will stop is with the mass production of artificial tasty protein. Moral enervation of seeing the big picture or whatever. I can't adopt an unpleasant diet - I love meat and hate most vegetables - just to "boycott Wal-Mart," as it were.

The wild cats which are our domestic cat's ancesters are solitary. Domesticated cats and feral cats are often different.

Feral cats who live off human trash and urban rodents frequently live in cooperative colonies. The females have limited ranges, and in the presence of plentiful food, happily live together. The males roam more and fight over mating rights, but again with plentiful food, it's not nearly such an issue as for the hunter in the wild with scarce food in a territory that needs protecting.

Domestic cats who live with humans are sometimes said to be in a state of permanent "kittenhood," depending on their humans for sustenance and protection. In kittenhood they live in litters; and many adult cats are fine living in "litters" as well. Some actually pair bond to the extent that they miss each other if separated.

If thinking of adopting a kitten, get two. They will entertain each other and their play-fighting with each other will keep your hands from getting clawed, bitten, and kicked when they express this natural behavior. When they grow up they may very well prefer to stay away from each other most of the time; ours do.

As with pets, I make compromises that are sustainable. I hate houses and I love condos, so I made sure to get dogs that would be better suited to it and accommodate their needs as best I can without a yard. I don't go vegetarian or anything else absolute, but I try to screen for more ethical food raising methods and reduce the amount of net suffering that goes into my food, and reduce the overall amount of meat and the like when I cross-reference with what is healthy or whatever. I pay more for better vegetables that are allegedly less damaging to the environment and better to the people that pick them, but I try not to get carried away because the cost-benefit between mass farming and small-scale farming is hard to figure out sometimes if you're not going to research every bean. In my view, diet, like successful pet ownership, is about habits, and they are both easier to modify incrementally (for me) once you get a decent foundation. But if I don't subdivide suffering into different categories then pretty much everything is pointless.

No, no! Not the Hurt Locker!
(link to original)

I never would have pictured LK to be a toy poodle guy.

The last I recall for life expectancy of indoor vs outdoor cats, it was a really huge difference, something like outdoor being 3 years on average, and 18 years for indoor. Which, considering that like three of the cats I owned as a kid didn't make it to a year, isn't all that shocking.

true outdoor cats (feral) probably have at least a 50% death rate before 1 year, so depending on what the person meant by outdoor, that could be true.

18 is an outlier for indoor cats, although not shockingly rare. 19+ years is pretty astonishing.

yay wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat
The average life expectancy for male indoor cats at birth is around 12 to 14 years,[88] with females usually living a year or two longer.[89] However, there have been reports of cats reaching into their 30s,[90] with the oldest known cat, Creme Puff, dying at a verified age of 38.[91] Feline life expectancy has increased significantly in recent decades.[92] Having a cat neutered or spayed confers some health benefits, since castrated males cannot develop testicular cancer, spayed females cannot developuterine or ovarian cancer, and both have a reduced risk of mammary cancer.[93] The lifespan of feral cats is hard to determine accurately, although one study reported a median age of 4.7 years, with a range between 0 to 8.3 years.[94]

Holy shit, three years? Jesus. I have never been so sure that I made the right decision about something as I am right now.

consider the mortality rate implications of an average litter size of 5-6, and 2-3 fertile periods per year. wild cats must have serious attrition rates.

That seems more like what I expected for indoor cats, although I actually have had a cat live to 18 and one of my mom's cats is still alive at 20! Doesn't say about outdoor (non-feral) cats, though.

I'm not sure there are reliable studies. I'm not even sure when they say "indoor" cats they mean "indoor only" or if they mean cats that are let indoors vs. cats that live in a barn or what have you. Three years for an indoor-outdoor cat is wildly different from any experience I or my friends have had, but of course that's just anecdotal.

Vetinfo.com says

Outdoor Cats Life Span

Outdoor cats live less as they are exposed to viruses, bacteria, accidents and fights, which can endanger their health.

A pet that spends more time outdoors may live on average 2 to 3 years less than a cat that lives exclusively indoors. In addition, unexpected accidents may end an outdoor cat's life at any time.

Stray and feral cats live significantly less. On average, a stray cat lives 5 years if he is in a community of cats and 2 to 3 years if he lives by himself. This is due to unbalanced nutrition and lack of veterinary treatment and vaccinations. In addition, feral cats may get killed while fighting other wild animals.
http://www.vetinfo.com/indoor-outdoor-cat-life-expectancy.html

for what that's worth. LOL

I grew up in the country with a shifting population of barn cats, and three years is about right. High turnover rate. Mind you, the primary matriarch of the entire tribe lived into the upper teens, squirting out litters like clockwork every breeding season. (The barn cat population only crashed after she did.) And some of hers made it into the teens as well. So some of those statistics are indeed from the kitten-mortality end of the scale's tendency to pull down the mean.

I get that a lot. It's much easier to grasp if you use a visual aid. See? He's got a sweater. Simple.

I think it's hard to get statistical data on something that so few people track in an an accurate way or by cats with similar situations. As MrsWidget says, the type of outdoorness really would seem like a huge variable for two categories. But I don't think the statistical big picture is all that relevant to my list of priorities in this instance so it's difficult for me to say. 3 cats not making it to a year would seem to me a shocking number, but it's clear there are radically different conceptions of pet ownership at play here.

I don't know much about toy poodles, but miniature poodles seemed to me to be like miniature schnauzers, in that they had a sort of "medium-small terrier personality." If Toy poodles are like that too - and they're all the same old "breed" afaik, unlike some intentionally-crossed breeds, miniature Schnauzers among them - then that's an awesome type of dog.

I've always felt like some really small dogs - Yorkshire terriers for example - kind of seemed like pin-headed hysterical yapping machines to me - I never got enough sense of... well, "intelligence" and "personality" are almost certainly pathetic fallacy misunderstandings of dog behaviour, but "intelligence and personality" that I got from, say, a schnauzer or bigger dogs.

But it could definitely be low sample size, or the fact that those two breeds don't pay much positive attention to non-owners compared to larger dogs. Relatedly: I miss my dog.

GUESS WHO JUST BROUGHT A BIG OL VOLE HOME RIGHT NOW

Damn Max. It was still warm. Ew.

Cats are social animals, although as with humans there's a lot of individual variation. They don't have the chummy pack behavior of dogs, but they don't like to be alone all the time any more than we do. Colonies are the norm for ferals, not the exception.

If you spend a lot of time out of the home, cat will generally be much happier and well adjusted with a companion than if it's left alone most of the time. This does, of course, depend on the specific cats involved. I've got two cats who adore each other and spend much of their time snuggled up together, but I've known cranky cats that weren't interested in sharing their owner with anyone.

We lived on a small farm like setup (apple orchard, chicken coop, multiple barns, a pasture for horses), with some always outdoor and some outdoor/indoor cats. We did have a busy road that led towards the mall. I was a bit unlucky, and mine got hit by cars, but we had others that lived a good long time, and even survived getting hit by cars. We raised them all from kittens and each of us siblings got to keep one, this was back before spaying/neutering was commonplace in our area.

We also learned to keep their food inside, as the possums would come and try to eat it, and they're pretty vile creatures.

Yes, I don't know much about toy dogs generally as they just seem too perilously small to consider, although admittedly that's an arbitrarily line, and when you look at some of the more "well put together" toys like chihuahuas they are relatively sturdy creatures not much different from a miniature. Mine is definitely a burly 12 lbs or so, although his nonstandard shape means he's still a marginal case in terms of breed classification.

It's hard to say, because I've seen a huge diversity across different dogs that are the same breed. Certainly, some are more predisposed to noise than others as a general rule. The thing with Yorkies especially and small dogs generally is that a lot of people seem to assume that they are stuffed animals or something and don't require exercise or dog-type activities, or anything but lap time, grooming, and treats. And training? Psh. The degree to which I've seen behavior change with just a moderate amount of exercise such as with the behavioral change of the boston terrier we inherited a few years back convinced me that it's definitely worth trying all that dog whisperer stuff before writing off breeds. Seriously, that show is awesome.
I guess what I'm saying is that for all practical purposes our other dog's breed might as well be Miniature Pinhead, and she's come a long way once the usually puppy bullshit was behind us.

LK said it already but I'll just reiterate that dogs are individuals with individual traits that don't necessarily map to perceived breed traits.

Yappy small dogs might be naturally yappy but it is far more likely that their owner does not consider their yappyness a problem worth tending to, which they probably would if the same behaviour was exhibited by a Rottweiler. Because the thing is dogs are dogs, regardless of breed. They have the same needs and they exhibit the same behaviours regardless if they're chihuahuas or great danes, but it's much easier to get away with being a shitty pet owner if your dog is tiny and just ignore problem behaviours instead of adressing them.

I don't really care about noise as such, it's more the... singularity of a yappy dog's yappiness, like it's locked onto a totally single-minded/mindless behaviour, till its frenzy's over with, and then it switches over into some other single-minded patrol-state. Reminds me of a stereotyped behavior although I imagine it rarely us, except in seriously bored dogs.

Maybe a different issue, given the size/role of the dog, but a relation's beloved Shetland Sheepdog - large and beautiful and probably potentially intelligent in a sheep-directed sort of way - has always seemed too directedly hyper/vigilant/restless to have the sort of "personality" I associate with a pet dog. But she wasn't my dog, for all that she didn't mind patting.

My miniature schnauzer liked to sit by the window and bark at interlopers, occasionally to the point of frenzy, but his default behavior seemed sort of affably curious compared to the hair-trigger wariness / crazy barking frenzy I associate with yap-dogs.

We essentially have our second cat for this reason. Even after Lizzie wasn't a real kitten any more, when she does not have a second cat to fuck with, she fucks with me instead. So we got a second cat, and like magic, my arms stopped being clawed and bitten for shits and giggles (now she'll only nip me if I'm doing something she doesn't particularly like). That cat, alas, had FIP and passed on, and almost immediately I became the target of Lizzie's rough play again. So then we got Jack, and they are currently living happily ever after (although sometimes Jack doesn't understand/care that Lizzie doesn't wanna play and he keeps bothering her. I can only assume he'd be trying to chew my arm off if we had no Lizzie).

Poodles are hunting dogs, so even the shrunk down versions retain the intelligence that the breed has as a characteristic, and none of them deserve the "frou frou" reputation they get.

Yes, I would quite agree with this. Of the three cats I've lived with at various times, all have engaged in killing of different sorts, so I wouldn't want to pretend it isn't a likely consequence. Some of this killing has been, if anything, beneficial, when it's rats and mice being caught, although being a sentimental soul it doesn't thrill me to see a cat toying with a rodent. Some of it has been unfortunate, from my perspective of liking birds, but not a conservation concern when it's sparrows and blackbirds being killed. Even less fortunate is when fantails or waxeyes are killed, as they are native and particularly appealing birds, though again are not a conservation risk. I should say that this has not been a common occurrence by any means, with our cats that is, but it does happen.

So yea, it's a judgement call based on one's location, the conservation and environmental concerns related to that location, and the owner's value judgements about their cat and the non-endagered and non-threatened species which might be preyed on. It's especially pressing in New Zealand with its plethora of bird species. We even get Kaka in the garden sometimes, coming from a Sanctuary not far away:



In the case of these, however, it would be the cat I'd worry about.

As for the cat being killed it's a similar thing really. It's unquestionably a risk that anyone takes if they let their cat roam. Having said that it's my experience that a location not directly on a busy road, with space to explore away from traffic, and with a cat acclimatised to that environment, the risk is not high. Not everyone is in this position, of course.

That's kind of like why we got two dogs the second time around, although less for clawing and fighting and more because they seem to really like having each other around even if they don't actually *like* each other that much. My wife just seemed really sure that would be the outcome, and that was more or less what happened. Of course, we were under the impression that two dogs would not be twice as much work, which was only sort of accurate.

It seems like you could take this thought process and assume it's going through your nemeses' owners' heads when you get yapped at. OK, maybe not affable curiosity, but the rest seems like exactly the kind of anthropomorphism that owners usually build around their pet's behavior. I mean, I *think* I have specific tastes in dog ownership but honestly they are pretty persuasive at times, and even with the marginal amount of dog knowledge that I have I feel pretty comfortable with most breeds.

I hear you about the "not twice as much work" thing. It's only sort of not twice as much work. It's like ... half again much work. Perhaps two-thirds, sometimes. :P

I totes miss my cat now and as a direct result of this thread will probably adopt two new kittens in the next couple months.

Could definitely be. But if so I definitely have an easier time relating to other people's schnauzers, poodles, or in a different way, beagles or labs/retrievers/german shephards, irrespective of who they're owned by and in most cases never having had one of those breeds.

The whole "we're just imagining a personality" thing is almost certainly more accurate than the naive common interpretation of dog behavior. Or rather, it's good to be skeptical about the latter? But in the absence of an all-that-compelling theory of dog-mind I mostly just try to temper my naivety rather than replace it with some sort of behaviorist doom and gloom about my (former) pet philosophical zombie.

The cat fights and related injuries is another reason I keep my cats indoors. Kitty-Boy, for example, never wanted to go outside unless he saw another cat. One time I caught him hissing and growling at the door, and when I opened it there was another white cat right outside. He immediately jumped it and I got quite a few nice scratches separating the two. He got a laceration on his eyelid that needed vet attention, but at least he got a good chunk of fur off of the other one. After that incident, I'd constantly see that damn white cat just sitting outside the front door when I got off of work and had to shoo it away. I'm not sure how he knew the other cat was outside the first time around, smell maybe? I dunno. But he was very territorial.

Much as I am usually happy with my cats being indoor-outdoor under the current circumstances... It's actually been a bit of a problem since we got the new dog. Who is an adorable friendly woobie, but is not sufficiently familiar with cats to not treat them like dogs. Which means she tries for friendly play behavior, the cats run, she chases... One cat actually got treed. (In related news, I discovered that one cat is really good at getting herself down from trees. Yay?) And the outdoors is complicating issues, because while one cat will run and hide in a cupboard, and then come out at night to whine, the other cat runs out into the back yard. And then won't come back inside until the middle of the night.

I suppose we could start keeping the pet door closed off all the time. (Though part of the reason we finally got a dog was that we had a house with a well-fenced back yard, and the dog can fit through the big cat door to use the yard freely.) But I suspect that cat, which loves the yard, would just start trying all the harder to sneak out whenever possible, and end up accidentally locked outside, which is...not good. And the whole "get used to the dog! The dog is actually friendly and non-aggressive, cat!" thing is going more slowly because it's hard to force the issue when the cat refuses to be in the house unless she's sure the dog is in the crate for the night.

I don't know. Possibly if I'd tried to get a dog while at the condo, I'd be complaining that acclimation was going slowly because none of them had any space to retreat to and calm down in before interacting again. The yard certainly seems to be complicating the issue at the moment.

Shit. I could have used your actual dog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide

Nothing fucks with crows. They will, literally, hound you for the rest of your life if you mess with one of them.

We got one of our current cats as a kitten, and he'd nap on the chest of our dog, who would dutifully lie still the entire time. Which was adorable, because as a part Newfie mutt he was roughly bear sized.

We had indoor/outdoor cats when I was growing up, which meant if we got 10 years out of them and had a body to bury we were lucky. At that point, though, I considered keeping a cat indoors all the time a bad idea. But having had several indoor only cats now, I don't think its as bad as I once did. Most of them simply don't care. They'll go out if they have a chance to see new things and smell new stuff, but only some seem highly motivated to do it. If they are getting fed and some play time (either with a person on another cat) they seem to be perfectly happy.

At this point I doubt I will have indoor/outdoor cats in the future, even if I have a house with a big yard or lots of empty land around. That's more about making sure they have happy healthy lives then being concerned about how many birds they might kill. And at this point cats have been pretty much everywhere for hundreds of years so its too late to talk about them being "unnatural" parts of the environment.

The stereotypical yappy small dog comes from owners who do a poor job of realizing that a small dog and a big dog have much the same mindset. Someone who owns a lab or a golden retriever, much less a rottweiller or a great dane, would never allow their dog to jump up and bark all the time. They'd train it not to do that and eventually the dog would learn. However, when a chihuahua or a yorkie jumps up people think it's adorable so they don't bother to train the dog that they shouldn't do that. As such the dog comes to have ideas about its place in the pack structure and you end up with a yappy dog. The big dog and the small dog are both the same species and while different dogs have different personalities, none of them are just fuzzy little humans, they all have a certain instinctive need for structure in their life.

I knew a guy who had three chihuahuas and a rottweiller. He treated them all exactly the same*. He had four quiet, well-behaved dogs.

*As far as training goes. Size differences, of course, meant that there were differences in treatment in other places of their lives.

On "no cat skeletons in trees!", I will simply note that 1) if a cat stayed up in a tree so long that it died, it would generally fall out and not leave a skeleton there; other things would eat the body and remove the skeleton either way, and 2) I have certainly heard stories of cats falling and suffering serious injuries when trying to leave trees, sometimes because they stayed up there so long that they were too weak to descend safely.

So, y'know. Maybe most cats do get out of trees safely. But on a thread about the many horrible things that can happen to outdoor cats, I don't think that "climbed a very tall tree in a moment of panic" is a completely safe option either. I know that there are a lot of rock walls I can climb up easily and have trouble with--or fall off of--when coming back down.

I used to have a cat. He was an indoor/outdoor cat. He pretty much did whatever he wanted and if you leaned out the door and called him, he'd come back. Or he'd comeback and meow at the door until you let him in. I think it would depend really, on the environment in which you live. I live in a very, very small rural town. There aren't (in my knowledge anyway) very many risks that would be associated with letting my cat basically have free-roam of the small 100(ish) person town.

Some breeds have more tendencies to bark and be guard dogs than others. Most of the bully breeds don't bark, while beagles tend to howl at stuff. It can be harder to try to curb a dog from it's natural tendencies, but definitely not impossible. And the opposite is also true, one Staffy we met, the owners had taught it that if it barked, it got a treat. Damn thing barked all the time in hopes of getting a treat.

For whatever reason I always found beagle bellowing endearing.

Probably because you never owned one.

Best friends growing up did, next door.

You find the damnedest things endearing.

"Look at little Fritzie, there he is contemplating the long arc of existence while pissing on my carpet."

There's one more reason for keeping cats indoors that I haven't seen mentioned at all: courtesy for your neighbours.

I grew up in the suburbs, with parents who were way more outdoorsey than me. They planted the usual flower beds in the front, and the back yard had a full vegetable garden. They loved birds, and set up several bird feeders. The cats of the block slaughtered the birds, shit in the garden, and ate the flowers. My parents complained (politely), but the owners refused to interfere with their pet's "natural" instincts. (The same people saw no hypocrisy in chastising dog-owners, of course.) We chased the cats out with a garden hose when we could, but you can't be there all the time.

If you want a cat as a pet, keep it indoors. When you take it outside, keep it on a leash or in an enclosed area. (Note that for a cat, a picket fence is about as enclosing as a wisp of fog.) If you think those things are cruel, the animal shouldn't be a pet in the first place.