Indoor Cats vs. Outdoor Cats
This blog entry in today’s NYT makes the case for keeping pet cats indoors all the time. Not just at night, not just in winter, but always. The author argues that indoor cats live 5-6 times longer than “free-range” felines, who have regular and often fatal run-ins with cars, dogs, wild animals, poison, mean people/other cats and also spend a fair amount of time killing birds, upending garbage cans and generally being a nuisance. If cats get separated from home (and are declawed on top of that), they typically cannot defend themselves and either die or join the legions of stray cats who, if “rescued”, are typically euthanized after some interval. Indoor cats, the argument goes, live longer, healthier, and less disruptive lives.
I know plenty of people who have indoor cats by necessity (i.e. city dwellers), and after all, that’s one of the great advantages of owning a cat: if you provide food, water, and a litterbox, a cat can stay indoors, alone if necessary, for hours or even a couple of days without ruining your furniture or becoming interminably depressed. (Try doing that with a dog!) And yet .. my cat (bless her soul) lived to the ripe old age of 15 and went outside nearly everyday. She killed more birds than I care to remember, but was generally happy and healthy ’til the end.
Well, maybe we were just lucky. Any thoughts from you cat lovers out there?
Well, I think there are really two issues here, one of which the blog entry misses. First, there’s the danger to the cat, which obviously varies depending on where the cat lives but is certainly appreciable almost anywhere. Second, there’s the danger to the surrounding wildlife, which can also be significant. Unlike most dogs, cats are effective predators — a single outdoor cat can catch and kill a lot of birds. In New York, they’re not likely to be killing anything but pigeons and starlings, but for people who live in less ecologically damaged areas, outdoor cats can present a significant threat to native songbirds and other small animals. Introduction of outdoor cats and dogs has been enormously damaging to wildlife in an number of areas across the world, and while that cat is out of the bag here (ha!), people’s pets can still present a threat to species already in trouble.