In praise of outdoor cats

[garote]

Little Mira has always been an outside cat, even when she was a young thing. I would supervise her on the back porch as she sniffed timidly around. She’s had multiple encounters with other cats, and possums, and gangs of raccoons, and even a dog on one startling occasion, but she learned to do the right thing each time. Run home.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen her blast in through the cat door, or vault through the open window, to escape pursuit from some creature intent on violence. I’ve chased foreign animals out of my house, out of the back yard, off the roof.

I do not look forward to the day when Mira fails to come home, or comes home injured as I have seen other cats do. But I accept it nevertheless, as the cost of keeping her the way I want her to be, the way I most enjoy her:

I want a cat that is sane!

All those cats sitting in windows? In silent houses, staring into space? They’re all as nutty as fruitcakes! Totally bonkers; left reality years ago and never came back. What else can you expect when you take a creature whose reactions are so fast it can casually slap a fly right out of the air … and you lock it in a silent, lifeless purgatory?

I know Mira is happy here, because being home is a choice she gets to make.

Comments

[juan-gandhi.livejournal.com]

I had a cat that could not stand being out under an empty sky. And he vomited when kids fed him a mouse. He was like my dog.