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How To Make An Outdoor Cat An Indoor Cat
Today’s feature tip is from the San Diego Natural History Museum with their tip How to Make Your Outdoor Cat a Happy Indoor Cat
Although it takes patience, an outdoor cat can be turned into a perfectly content indoor pet. The key is to make the conversion gradually and provide lots of attention and stimulation while the cat is indoors.
Cats are creatures of habit, so you must be careful to slowly replace your cat’s old routine of going outside with the new exciting routine of staying in. If your cat is outdoors most of the time, bring your cat inside for increasingly longer stays. Gradually shorten the length of time the cat is outside until you no longer let him or her out at all.
With cat leash laws becoming more common, this tip comes in handy. Although my cat is a bit different, she’s happy to stay inside for months during the winter, but at the first sign of Spring (and yes they know even though they’re indoors), her nose is at the back door to get out.
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I adopted an 8-month un-neutered male cat (whom I immediately had neutered of course). I’m pretty sure he was a “free range” cat before I got him from the shelter. I kept him in for 5 weeks, but was distressed by how much he would roam the house crying! I work at home so had plenty of time to play with him and give him plenty of attention and affection. I didn’t realize until he started going out, that that was why he was crying all the time.
Now I can’t keep him in. He doesn’t roam, he’s almost always on the porch or right outside in yard or driveway when I check on him. But he will not come in except to eat, drink and play a little with my 2 indoor kitties.
If I try to keep him in, he not only cries and howls but he starts knocking things off of tables and using his paw to bang the window blind against the window making quite a racket. He’s relentless!
Any suggestions for getting him to be an indoor cat or does this seem as hopeless to you as it does to me!?
The only thing I would suggest is that if you have the money, build him a little outdoor house made out of screen and wood. 8×10 is a good size, put an old tree in it so he can climb on it. That way he can be outside and you won’t have to worry about him. I have 4 cats, one feral, one stray, one whose mother took her out to teach her to hunt and she got lost and I found and kept her and one I raised from the time he was 8 hours old. My two males like to go out. We have a porch that is screened in and they spend a lot of time out there and they love it. I have taught them to walk on a lead so they can go out and I do tie up my female. Those as my only suggestions for you but the thing is you have to keep him safe. He does not know what lurks out there, cars, feline leuk. other cats, etc.