Mew has brought six rats into the house in the last two days. Or maybe they're just large mice, I dunno. She plays with them and chases them around, so I've gotten into the habit of killing them myself, but the two that she's killed she eats the hindquarters so that I find the front end lying in the upstairs hallway with guts hanging out Edit: seven. I disposed of #6 and threw it in the trash, so she went out and found herself a new plaything. She's currently tossing it in the air on the stairway Edit again: disposed of #7 and threw it in the trash after she ate its tail while it was still alive but not fighting anymore
Do you guys let your cats out or are they 100% indoor? Mine 100% indoor. Godzilla got out a couple weeks ago and was at the door scratching and screaming to be let back in. Him being black scares me that people will hurt him.
My childhood cat found his way to us as an abandoned kitten and demanded the outdoors. My current cat was a hoodrat that pregnantly adopted my friend in order to shit out a litter. She also demands the outdoors. Both were already set in their ways and I didn’t try and break them from it. If I had a kitten that didn’t know any better, I’d make them indoor.
Godzilla was a rescue. I think he was abused. We’ve had him about 6-7 years and still freaks out when we open a bag. He has seen the outdoors and wants no part of that. Kanye also a rescue but we got here a weeks so I don’t think she remembers. I always wonder how they know to go back to their home.
Cats are incredibly adept at finding their way back home. I’ve had a country cat and city cat and had no issues with either situation. That said, country cat was smart as fuck and knew when there were red tailed hawks or coyotes about and he always got the fuck out of dodge and came back home (neighbors lost 4 cats in the span of my cat’s 17 year lifespan). City cat is off the beaten path enough where there’s never been a road crossing issue. There could be, I guess, but she just patrols around my fence line for the most part.
100% indoor. They freak out if you open an outside door if they are in the same room. Has been like that ever since we brought them home. We were going to leash them and let them explore the outdoors some but they wouldn’t have anything to do with so little as opening the door to the outside.
I grew up in the country. We had some feral cats that lived down in our barn. My dad wanted to relocate them so he caught them and hauled them off to some other property several miles away. My dad jokes “they beat us home” because within a few days they were back
100% indoor. He’s interested in outside as in he likes to look out the windows or a screen door and he will sniff the air from an open window but the outside terrifies him and he doesn’t actually want out
We let at our cat outdoors but only when we're home and usually for segments of 15 or 30 minutes. She's pretty old now but still catches lizards and chipmunks occasionally.
Growing up my friend had a cat goonky and his dad hated it, drove it like ten miles to a lake and let it go, three days later it was back lived to be 18
Cats were indoor when we lived in Westwood. Now that we live in Aptos, they're indoor/outdoor. The world is their shitbox
Ramsey was an indoor cat but we let him out in the fenced back yard all the time. He was either too dumb to figure out how to climb the trees/fence or just didn't give a fuck about it...
our cat growing up was indoor/outdoor. she was an alley cat we slowly domesticated. never left her out overnight but we let her roam during the day if she wanted out. brought plenty of birds to the front door our two cats now are strictly indoors, but they love looking outside and tracking squirrels/chipmunks/rabbits/birds btw i hope nobody here declaws their cats
We were young and stupid and just thought that’s what you were supposed to do. We were irresponsible and didn’t look into it until after the fact and feel terrible for it and will never do it again. That’s no excuse but I feel like I do my part to be a good person and will do better moving forward and research things for my pets before acting
ive never “modified” my pets. Why do people declaw cats? Seems as useless as clipping ears and tails for dogs to make them look mean.
It seems like it is a thing people do so cats don’t claw their furniture. It’s disgusting though and I’m thankful my cat lives a normal life and doesn’t seem to have any negative affects from it but I still feel shitty knowing what the procedure actually is. We’d probably still spoil him just as much as already do if he had front claws but I feel like we try to make up for it and he runs the house and gets what he wants
From the Humane Society What is declawing? Too often, people think that declawing is a simple surgery that removes a cat's nails—the equivalent of having your fingernails trimmed. Sadly, this is far from the truth. Declawing traditionally involves the amputation of the last bone of each toe. If performed on a human being, it would be like cutting off each finger at the last knuckle.
Honestly, pulling that up and reading it again makes me physically sick. He’s 7 so I was 28 when we got him which is way too old to be that irresponsible.
you’ve always come off as a good dude so I doubt you did it out of malice. Not to minimize it or act like a cat’s well being doesn’t matter but at least you learned.
It also apparently can make them bite more since they don’t have the front claws and he definitely fits that but it’s like that’s my bad so can’t really even get that mad at him even though we try to train him not to
100% indoor. My girlfriends cat was outdoors when we were in college but once we moved in together we broke him of it. He gets his fix from sitting on the screened in porch now. Just too much dangerous shit out there for cats to be outdoor imo
Haven’t started letting Roscoe outside any yet, he’s maybe 3 months old at this point. Not sure what the proper age to start letting them roam is but we go back and forth letting him out sometimes once he is older. mother fucker loves to destroy toilet paper rolls. Not gonna be good for him or us if we go on another shortage nationally
Also is anyone else’s cat fascinated with running water? If i leave the door open when i am pissing he runs in and stands up on his hind legs and watches my stream. Then once i flush the toilet he jumps on the bowl and watches the water flush.
Stanley does this. He’s fallen in the toilet several times. Also I read somewhere that cats can’t see water that sits in bowls real well or something like that? That’s why they like to drink out of fountains or a running faucet
sometimes I weigh things out before I posted them because I don’t want to sound like a dick and sometimes I just spout my bullshit. This is one such time that I don’t want to sound judgmental. But, that’s exactly why I keep mine indoors 100% of the time. Especially Godzilla. He is about 20-25 pounds and black. I once read a story about (mostly during Halloween) what people do to black cats and told myself I’d feel like an irresponsible owner if I let him out and I’d probably never be able to forgive myself if something ever happened to him. When we first got him he got out and I literally tackled him outside to catch him. And I do mean literally as in I dove on the sidewalk to catch him. That was the only time other than the one a few weeks ago that he got out. That time he made it downstairs this last time he didn’t try it.
Yep. Both of our cats are black so I understand your paranoia. And yea, I pretty much guilted my girlfriend into keeping her cat indoors when we moved in together and when we got Stanley I told her we’d only get him if he is indoor only. Dogs, coyotes, cars, hawks, etc. just too much to worry about. Not to mention outdoor cats are fucking terrible for the ecosystem/local wildlife.
it's amazing how resilient cats are, I wouldn't trip about the claws at this point when you didn't know at the time Ours got hit by the neighbor with a sickle mower in the ditch. She was used to darting in the grass for the sparse traffic we have. Took her a day to show up at her favorite spot, she was just sitting there with the hind leg dangling. Vet took it off at the hip. She seems to value me and her newfound life as a mostly housecat, but was sleeping under my hammock tent this summer once we allowed her outside again..she wanted out after a few days lol here she was within five minutes of letting her out for the first time this summer after being healed up Ultimately these cats here were on their own outside of the food/water my uncle would bring every other week.. probably less in the winter sometimes tbh and he wouldn't socialize with them. So when they want to go out they basically aren't going to take kindly to not being able to. Not ideal, and honestly I realize it's completely selfish, but collars scare me from the standpoint of alerting predators.. need to look into that more, but with North Dakota winters they're all inside atm. Either way we're doing a lot better than the neighbors who have dozens at last count and don't fix any of them. We had one show up here about a month ago, so it was her last chance at finding a better situation this winter. Thank god they are a mile+ away or we'd be inundated and fixing all of them
people especially during Halloween like to hurt them. Set them on fire and bullshit like that. I have an all black Maine Coon fuck chancing it.
Yes mine is. He’ll sit on the counter and watch me basically every time I shave. He loves when my wife cleans the bathroom because our main bathroom has a tub so she’ll run the water a bit as she does it
The declawing thing is a stipulation that most shelters require you to agree to before adopting. I didn’t realize the issue until going through that process.
We’ve had to buy two water fountains because they wouldn’t drink enough water out of a bowl. They’d paw at it to make the water move or try to cup it in their paw and drink out of their paw, which lead to some cat acne (a real thing!)
We had a fountain but then discovered that Bryant prefers a cup and would try to steal from our cups over the fountain. Then we started keeping a small glass filled with water in my wife’s office and he has been quite content with this setup