Should You Let Your Feline Outside?
Based on my own experience, I firmly believe that it’s best to keep your house cat indoors. I wasn’t always this way. When I moved from New York City to the New Jersey suburbs many years ago I thought that perhaps some outdoor time would do my two mature cats some good; but after letting them out regularly, right after feeding them their cat food, I noticed that they were both changing, and the changes weren’t always for the best.
At that time, I had a female Tortoiseshell named Fey and a male Siamese named Sinatra. After being let out for a few days, I began to notice that Fey had a new past-time, chasing and killing baby squirrels – and of course, she’d bring them home to us as little presents, which made us all squeamish.
Sinatra had a different type of issue. It became clear that he was the target of some neighborhood “bully” cats. He’d come home with all types of scratches from being in cat fights.
After awhile, we decided enough was enough, and tried to reverse what we did, and make our cats back into “house” cats. Well, as you might imagine, they would have none of that. They would meow and hound us, especially after we had given them their cat food, making us quite miserable, until we reluctantly relented.Speaking of that, I do suggest a premium cat food from a good brand like Life’s Abundance. premium cat food is even more important in light of the recent pet food recalls of the mainstream brands.
I now am a firm believe of house cats remaining indoors. If you’re on the fence on the issue consider a few things before deciding to let them out. Once let out:
You won’t have control over the cat food that they eat once they leave your house. A neighbor might feed them premium food (if you’re lucky), cheap cat.
§ food or table scraps. You also won’t have any idea if they’ve been eating animals.
§ Your cat could potentially get hit by a car or ingest poison and you would never know.
§ Your cat might also get picked up by the local shelter.
Whatever you decide, I’m sure you’ll make the right decision for your pet.
