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Anonymous
As far as I'm concerned, indoor vs. outdoor is a large part of whether an owner is responsible or not. I keep my cat indoors only, and I feel it would be somewhat irresponsible not to, even though i'm the only cat owner on the street who does. Why?
I live next to a relatively busy arterial road with lots of curves and twists. Idiots love to use this road as their own personal racetrack, so even if my cat was well-versed in the way of fearing cars, it's a good possibility some douchebag would run her over anyway. (at least 1 cat on my street has died this way).
Secondly, I live in Australia and next to a national park. Filled with lots of (delicious) endangered species for my cat to go hunt, filled with lots of poisonous beasts for my cat to go hunt and be killed by, and laden with traps for rabbits and feral cats with the intention of killing them. (1 cat on the street has been lost to a beartrap-style trap, 1 more has eaten poisoned meat intentionally left out, and more than a handful of animal-owners i know have lost their animals to snakes etc.) Yes, I deny my cat her desire to be the mighty hunter, but having weighed it up, I think it's a pretty fair call. She'll just have to be content with chasing ankles, the vast array of toys she has, my fingers and the occasional flying insect which manages to get in the house.
Apart from that, the worst thing my cat has ever suffered from is a case or two of fleas, which is my family's fault for petting the outdoor cats in our neighbourhood and bringing them in. We lavish my cat with love (more than she probably wants, actually), play with her on a daily basis (moreso if she's in a particularly frisky mood) and feed her better than we probably feed ourselves. I can't think of much wrong with this situation.
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