Indoor or Outdoor Cat

Whether to raise your new kitten or rescue cat as an indoor or outdoor cat is a big question. Sometimes there is no choice, you live in the city and indoors is the only option. My personal choice is indoors as it is much safer, and if you, the human, do your part in making your home cat friendly, an indoor cat can be a very happy, healthy and well adjusted cat.

If you live in a more rural location where there is less traffic, no predators running loose to attack your kitty, outdoors is fine too. Where I live, most cats are outdoor cats, but this is gradually changing. There is so much traffic nowadays, cats roam and come to grief with cars,  neighbouring dogs or other cats, people put out rat poison either to take care of a rat infestation or because they want to get rid of your cat, not to mention picking up ticks, fleas, cat mites, makes an indoor cat a very attractive option.

If you have an outdoor cat, spaying and neutering becomes even more important, you do not want your tom impregnating someone else’s cat, nor getting into fights with other toms in the neighbourhood. Similarly, you do not want to find yourself with a litter (or two) of unwanted kittens. Neutering and spaying is just part of being a responsible cat parent.

If you opt for having an indoor cat, try to make your home cat friendly with lots of things for kitty to do, places to sleep and hide. This does not need to be either expensive or ugly, get creative. Cats tends to like simple - look at their fascination with cardboard boxes. Shelves and ramps, tunnels and hideyholes are all things that appeal to cats generally. If you have a bit of outdoor space, you can even enclose a section of that for kitty using chicken wire (or something similar) to create kitty’s personal safe space outside, with access via a secure cat door. There are so many options, so many ideas, including for a tiny budget.