An indoor life offers many cat health and safety benefits, especially in today’s concrete jungles. Unaccompanied cats face all kinds of dangers when they venture outdoors.
Still not sure indoor living is the best fit for your cat? Here are the pros of keeping them in.
It Keeps Away Diseases Other Cats Carry
Feline AIDS (FIV), feline leukemia (FeLV), feline distemper (panleukopenia), feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), or upper respiratory infections (URI) are some of the serious diseases common among feral and homeless stray cats.
If your cat comes into contact with a sick cat roaming the streets, he or she may catch the same disease that cat has. What’s worse: the disease passed on to them could be life-threatening.
Parasites are Kept at Bay
When wandering outdoors, cats are more likely to pick up parasites such as ticks, fleas, intestinal worms, ear mites and ringworm. Parasites may not be fatal but they can cause itching and skin infections as well as vomiting and diarrhea.
Your cat might even bring those parasites home with her, putting your family at risk. And once they’re in your home, parasites are extremely difficult to get rid of.
Safety Benefits
Besides keeping your cat healthy, not letting your feline pal venture outdoors helps keep him or her safe. That means you don’t have to worry that they might:
- Get hit by a car. Cats aren’t great at navigating busy streets. And yes, they often get into car accidents.
- Be a victim of animal cruelty. Sadly, there are indeed people out there who intentionally harm cats. Some shoot, poison, trap, abuse, drown, or even kill cats that they find on the streets just for fun or “sport”. Others actually go around neighborhoods in search of cats that they can steal and sell to dealers (who earn big from selling cats to laboratories).
- Be attacked by other animals. Depending on where you live, your cat may be attacked by stray cats, stray dogs, raccoons, coyotes, or foxes. Although cats are good hunters, most may receive serious injuries during encounters with other predators.
- Get poisoned. Cats find the taste of certain toxins pleasant and so they may end up ingesting poisonous toxins such as spilled antifreeze. While hunting, cats might eat rodents that have been poisoned by bait, thus exposing them to the same poison.
- Climb trees. Cats can easily climb up trees but are not always able to climb down. In most scenarios, someone may spot them and call for help getting them down. However, there are cases where cats fall from the tree (after being stuck there for days) due to dehydration and weakness.
- Get lost. The farther and longer your cat wanders from your home, the bigger the chance he or she might lose their way home.
Lifespan Benefits
Indoor cats can make for lifelong companions. With the aforementioned cat health and safety concerns minimized, you can look forward to spending many years with your feline pal.
On average, an all-indoor cat has a lifespan of 10 to 18 years. In contrast, a cat that regularly roams outdoors usually lives between two and five years only (or longer, depending on the environment).
Raising and keeping your feline pal indoors can help keep cat health and safety problems at bay. Just remember that by committing to this, you will need to step up efforts to keep your cat active, entertained and happy.
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