I want my cats to be as perfectly pleased with their lots in life as any other cat lover does, so it's easy to have mixed feelings on this subject, but I can think of several
arguments against the idea of keeping your
pet cat outdoors, or even, in fact, allowing him outside at all:
Domesticated cats are not
wild animals. When, as a pet owner, you assume
complete responsibility for another
life, it is your job to protect the length and
quality of that life in the best way you can, for as long as it lasts. The average
lifespan for an
indoor cat is between 18 and 22 years. For a domestic cat that is kept outdoors: 10 to 14. Indoor cats are less frequently infested with
fleas,
ticks, and
internal parasites. They are less often infected with hemobartonella,
feline leukemia,
feline infectious perotinitis,
feline panleukopenia,
feline immunodeficeincy virus, and
rabies. (Most of which are
contagious, all of which are
life threatening, some of which have no
cure.)
Indoor cats are less frequently
killed or
maimed by cars. They get into fewer
catfights. They are less frequently harrassed by cat-hating
neighbors and ill-tempered little
children. Indoor cats almost never turn up with fly eggs,
maggots, or botfly larvae boring into and eating their flesh where an
injury has been previously sustained. (Outdoor cats, especially in the
summer, suffer those
charming situations commonly, most especially when they tend to
fight with other outdoor cats over issues like
food and
territory.) Outdoor cats (and dogs) sometimes get
stolen and sold to
medical research facilities. They are exposed to
insecticides,
fertilizers, and other
chemicals that can be harmful or fatal when inhaled, absorbed through the skin, or ingested. Outdoor cats sometimes
freeze in the cold and suffer
heat exhaustion or
heat stroke in the summer.
Certainly, some cats
want to be
outside. Certainly some cats enjoy the
freedom of being able to
roam about at their own
discretion, and who can blame them for finding happiness in that? But there are those that say that unfortunately, what someone
wants to do is not always what is
best for them to do, and that as
cat owners, it is our
responsibility to make
decisions like these for our felines. Many people feel that keeping your kitty indoors unless you can be outside to
supervise him is the surest way to keep him
safe. It's a part of taking the best care you can of him, just like
neutering him,
feeding him a
balanced diet, changing his
litter, making sure his
vaccinations are up to date, etc.
"Does that mean its okay to keep retarded humans as pets?" Of course it does. What an excellent analogy!
Seriously, though, domestic dogs and domestic cats are not critters that were snagged out of the wild and put into a cage. They're not animals that ever roamed free in their own right, although that is a beautiful and romantic kind of concept. There was never any such thing as a pack of wild chihuahuas, or a nomadic group of chocolate-point himalayan cats out on the hunt. Certainly a case can be made against the entire concept and tradition of domestication, and therein, if I understand correctly, lies the impetus behind PETA's "Keeping Pets Is A Manipulation Of Nature" argument.