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Comment by hanniabu | Hacker News Reader

Indoor cats are often under-stimulated and depressed and have nothing to do to pass the time except to eat and sleep

I have had a few cats that had cat flaps, so they could come and go as they pleased. They slept indoors, often on the warmest lap they could find, a lot. However, they also disappeared into the trees and bushes in the neighborhood for hours at a time and often came back grubby and spent ages cleaning themselves. Pretty obviously a sign they had been doing something engaging.

When I visited my friends who had indoor cats, they always seemed either timid or bored, spending hours just sitting looking out windows or sleeping.

I always found it hard to watch a cat staring out at the world, with their only stimulation/interaction happening in the small amount of time each day when people were at home and not busy with something else or sleeping.

It's that choice between a short but fulfilling life, or a long and mediocre one. A lot of humans disagree on which they prefer too.

No cats would disagree, though, except those already conditioned to captivity. Any cat, given a free choice from birth and treated well, will choose to spend time both indoors and outdoors.

I’d argue the same about humans, frankly. The only ones content to stay indoors all day are those conditioned to, and damaged by, the captivity.

Two of our cats died in their mid-teens of old cat illness, and we chose to have them put to sleep at home, purring on someone's lap. The other medical options the vet suggested in each case would have given the cats a bit more time, but it would have been a poor quality of life for them and nothing we wanted to see them put through.

The only cat that lived a short life had nothing to do with being allowed outside. He was the most unique cat I've ever encountered. He'd could use door handles, play fetch, come and get you if he wanted to go out and the cat flap had been locked for whatever reason, would wait for me at the end of my road when I walked home from work and would then wait for my to start running and race me to the front door. Sadly he was born with a condition that meant he passed away before he turned 5, but he was happy and playful every day. Losing him impacted me more than I would have believed possible.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that it's not such a binary choice. As long as you don't live right next to a road with lots of traffic, cats that can come and go as they please don't necessarily live short lives.

It's just idiots who think all cats can learn to live alongside fast cars that end up with young dead cats.

Traffic isn’t the only problem. Housecats are also prey animals if you live anywhere near where foxes, coyotes, large birds of prey, etc… are around.

As it so happens, a lot of places in this country, even in many cities, may be near green spaces and preserves where these kinds of wildlife can be found.

Sure, traffic and horrible people who think it’s fun to torture animals to death are an additional concern in more densely populated areas, but they can also be a threat in less densely populated areas.

The problem is that especially nowadays where there are just not as many mice and people have cats for emotional reasons rather than us working animals, cats are responsible for killing off local songbird populations and otherwise damaging if not collapsing ecosystems because they are effectively invasive species in most places of the world. Famously, Australia is probably the best example, where cats are/have devastated the ecosystems, including pushing around 30 species near extinction, along with all the other problems due to invasive species.

Unless you have a barn where mice thrive, it is not advisable to let them out to eradicate the local songbird or amphibian populations.

In some parts of the US, the outdoors can also be very hazardous. In the suburb I live in, on top of the usual risks that come with developed areas like traffic there's also large predators like coyotes, owls, and bobcats that are out in the darker hours and will make a meal of a cat (especially smaller ones). The stream of missing cat posts online is constant.

I agree inside a house is more boring than an alley, but have you seen how much time big cats spend sleeping?

...unless they are entertained by other cats and dogs in the family, we have found. in that case, and "mileage my vary", one can end up with Looney Tunes style frivolity sideshows all day.

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