I once had a neighbor who was thoroughly convinced their indoor/outdoor cat never strayed further than a couple houses around. As proof, she put a GPS tracker and little camera on her cat. 24 hours later she had the proof she didn’t want. Her cat went as far as a mile away, into the nearby woods where their were coyotes and other predators that would a snack of her cat. Her cat crossed the interstate several times, went to a construction site, and various other places that had me surprised her cat was still alive.
The following week was full of them building a catio and enriching their home. The cat became an indoor cat and chilled out very happily in the catio. They spent the summer harness and leash training their cat as well.
Oh, and the cat killed over a dozen birds and didn’t eat any of them in the single day my owner tracked them with the camera and GPS. They had been going out daily for over a year. Imagine a cat killing 12 birds a day, everyday, for just a year. That devastates the local bird population and leads to the extinction of entire species.
Enrich your home, install a catio, get a few cat trees/towers, play with your cat, and they’ll live long healthy lives. No worries about some random person killing them with poison or shooting them, no worries about them getting hit by a car, no worries about destroying the local ecosystem. My cats are 17 and 15 years old, 100% indoors their entire lives, and they’re happy.
Oh and since avian flu aka bird flu is spreading, please remember that it kills animals that eat the contaminated meat. That means if a cat kills an infected bird and eats it, they will get sick and die.
