Finishing Up

OK, so here's what it comes down to: I skipped about the 'Net a bit, reading a lot of the arguments for keeping cats inside all the time, and I freely admit that some circumstances actually demand it, and at some times it's necessary, and in many cases it's a perfectly happy and desirable way to have a feline in your life. But the arguments against letting a cat outdoors are all about the terrible risks a cat runs being out of doors. These articles speak of how old-school cat owners 'like to think of cats as being independent and free-sprited', as though that were some kind of propaganda, an urban myth that we convince ourselves of, and not something a cat will shove down your throat if you start treating them like a kind of small, agile dog. This view, they say,, must be gently but firmly put aside for the good of our little Fuzzles. To make an obvious parallel argument, people should never, ever, under any circumstances, climb into a car. After all more people are killed because of car wrecks than any other reason. It's for our own good - and it might curb some of our mobility and life choices, but hey, we'll live a good long time, right?

Sure, you say, but we're people, and we're responsible for ourselves. Cats aren't, *we* have to be responsible *for* them.

Here's my response:

No.

Your cats aren't your pretend-children-who-never-grow-up-and-always-need-you. I don't care what you say. That's what dogs are, I will freely admit. Dogs are dependent family members, they will need to be by your side till the day they die, and when you have one it's a full time job, you've got to have an eye on them *all* the time. A cat can be raised to be fully dependent on you, sure, and a lot of them will be happy little creatures all their lives. And maybe you even believe that there's no minimum home size for a properly raised indoor cat; that in the right circumstances they could be happy in a place the size of a cardboard box.

Again, that is a negatory.

I don't know a lot about the methods of keeping indoor animals, but I do know exercise is one thing a happy animal can't live without. And according to my estimation of the muscles on a cat, they need some place bigger than my 30 foot trailer to move around in. Being indoors all the time was never an option for any cat that wanted to be with us. Fortunately, although we move a lot, we live on Rennie campgrounds, a far more animal-friendly environment than most burbclaves of the world, even the ones that require you to keep your pet indoors.

Yes, I keep my pet indoors when it's required. Pix will live to get over it.

I think the reason we go on and on about the safety features of the home being the best choice over the dangerous outdoors is because the 'people' side of the relationship is far more important to us than, say, the cat side of the relationship. In a word, the cat is emotionally our child, and if they die after only seven years we'll be sad. Therefore a cat that lives 20 years is better than a cat that lives for 5 years.

And maybe a cat would choose to live solely indoors if it knew better. Depends on the cat. But I tend to think not, because most of them *don't* choose it. People do things that shorten or risk our lives all the time.

So what is a cat, to a person? As opposed to my dog, who can't do this, my cat is my friend whom I trust, and who trusts me, because he wants to, not because he has to. A cat is different things, of course, and all I can say is that I try very hard, when figuring out what a cat is, to look at the cat itself. Not what *I* think it is, or what it is to me, what it *is*. To felipomorphize, if you will - not 'personality' per sey, as in how does it act, but what does it *like*? What does it want? What does it *see*? How attached to me is it? How well does it deal with change, with the world?

I loved Miss Tabitha dearly, but it was pretty clear she was a divorcee - she'd been abandoned. She was sociable and polite, but she kept a cool distance from most people. It made her excellent as an indoor-outdoor cat; she was home-loving, but wary, mature and streetwise, though I confess she did get pretty territorial around the neighborhood cats, and I preferred keeping her in at night so she wouldn't beat up on them - or on my roommate's black Lab, a twitchy, barky pile of nerves who viewed her with terrified respect. Is it bad to raise a cat to have that kind of self-reliance? As long as they have a balance of love in their lives, I think it's an excellent aspect of personality, and something cats take to very naturally, if you can encourage it.

Because of course, that's what they are.

So Pixillation Jones is asleep right now in my inbox, and later on he will be outdoors, and here is something that can be taken to the nearest financial institution: if tonight he gets run over by a car exceeding the 5mph campground speed limit, or manages to encounter an owl big enough to take him, or has some other awful thing happen that results in his death or permanent disappearance from my life, then it will be as the death of a loved one in a traffic accident. I will grieve and and grieve and wail and hurt, and my choice to let him outside that night will lodge inside me like a shard of glass - but I won't change my mind or regret his life. I can't live every day terrified of what would happen if he wasn't in my life, any more than I could do so if I were married to a fisherman, or a cop, or a fireman. Or if I had a child who was of age. There is no certainty in this choice, but I won't be fool enough to act like there is.

My mother had a good saying for times like this: you pays your dime, and you takes your chances. Thanks, Mom.

OK, I think I'm done now. Thank you kindly for letting me go on. And, well, on.:)