Hello Everyone!
I'm new here and I'm really enjoying your posts. I had originally posted this under a question about indoor/outdoor cats in the gereral pet discussion, but thought that it would be a great topic to discuss here.
I thought that it would be fun for everyone to share their ideas on how they let thier cats outdoors safely.
I have three cats who are all indoor kittys only. I don't mean to offend anyone here at the forum, so please understand that this is my opinion only. I respect everyone elses opinion who thinks differently than I do.
I'm not sure why it is still common to let pet cats live loose outdoors. It is unlikely that anyone would consider it appropriate letting any other type of pet live loose outdoors to wonder the neighborhood unsupervised.
As precious as cats are, many people consider them a niusance and would harm them if they caught them in thier yard, garden, garbage, etc. Not to mention those who would purposely harm your pet unprovoked.
Also think about all the germs, poisons or who knows what that your cute kitties could get into out there or bring home to you and your children. (Think about your cat climbing in your neighbors garbage and then climbing on your sofa...)
To give our cats an outdoor area to play, we had a screened in porch at our former house. Our current home is in the woods so we built a chain link dog run onto the side of our house for our cats to play in.
We reinforced the ground around the run with flagstone and covered any larger openings in the run with wire netting so that no dogs, racoons, mountain lions, etc could get in. We included the chain link roof for more protection, plus we added a solid roof on top of that so our kitties can go outside if it rains or snows.
My husband built platforms in the dogrun at all different levels with bridges from one to the other for our kittys to climb on. I hung some cat toys from the roof of the dog run for them as well.
We built a kitty door to the run so that our cats can go in and out as they please. It's a little cat paradise and our kitties just love it! Our one cat Jasmine seems to like it the best. She gets so excited when my husband goes outside and talks to her. It's really cute!
You could build something like this on a much smaller scale with cheaper materials if
wild animals were not an issue where you live.
I hope that this idea inspires everyone to pamper thier cute kitties with a safe and fun outdoor play area. It would be fun to see other great
outdoor cat play enclosures and ideas for letting cats outdoors safely!
