r/outdoorcats

I domesticated a feral cat last summer, and it's been living with me all winter. I have a flat in a major city and a cottage in the countryside where spend a lot of the summer. I found the cat starving in the woods injured near my cottage last summer. It didn't like or trust people, or know how to meow, and had clearly grown up feral. I fed it, and it started coming around a lot. Eventually it went into the house and let us pet it. We brought it to the vet and had it chipped and fixed then taught it to use a litter box, and it started sleeping in the house.

When winter came we brought the cat back to our apartment in the city, and kept it as an indoor cat for months. My partner and I work from home, and the cat gets really stressed if either of us leave the house. It started waiting on top of the neighbors mailbox next the road whenever we'd go out to eat, so it would see us pull up when we got back, before he even let us pet him.

Last summer when we had to go somewhere overnight, we just left him outside and he'd take care of himself, but back then he was still just a feral cat we were befriending. We have somewhere we'd like to go for a week later this summer, but he's domesticated enough now that doesn't feel right anymore. The problem is he's terrified of humans other than us, so having a pet sitter would just stress him out more. I'm considering leaving him an auto feeder and access to the outdoors, but I'm worried about leaving him alone that long. Any advice?

So our cat comes inside when we are home but stays outside when we are at work and overnight. With that, he has taken a liking to going under our house for sleeping/protection. We live in a single wide trailer. I have no issues with him going under there and was actually wondering if anyone had ideas how to make it better for him under there.

I was thinking of making that his outdoor area by creating some type of cutout so he can easily go in and out. In the winter, we could put his cat box in there with straw so he has a warm place to sleep but just can’t really figure out how to make it happen. Anyone have recommendations?

I recently (like a day ago) got a stray/semi-feral kitten that was approximately 4 months old and someone in my house "set her free" while she's not spayed. Is there any chance that she'll come back for food or anything? Or is it hopeless? What do I do in this situation?

hi! my kitty got fleas about 6 months ago. i successfully got rid of them, and we also moved on top of that and replaced pretty much everything made of fabric. he’s been on meds since, but i missed a couple months of giving meds when he wasn’t going outside at all.

recently i had to take him out of the house, and i did his flea meds about 4 days before. when going back inside, i walked him a little around the neighborhood bc i saw someone else doing that and he always wants to go outside. i was hoping to make this a regular thing for his own enjoyment but now i’m hesitant. i live in an area that has fleas pretty bad bc it’s swampy. i was/am concerned because i know that his flea meds don’t prevent them from going on the cat, just kill the fleas after. i know the meds are effective on him because of last time, but im paranoid i didn’t apply it well enough or something. ive found two fleas and seen him itch just a little. one was crawling my head 😀, we were napping and my head was touching him. i just found another in the same spot we were laying about 10 hours later, but it seemed like it could have been dying? it tried to do a hop but didn’t go anywhere- just hopped in place. i vacuumed it up and the whole couch and surrounding area, and im washing all the blankets etc.

i guess i just wanna know a few things-

what constitutes thorough enough application of the medicine? i put him in a lamb outfit later that night and could smell some of the flea meds on it and got worried i wiped some of it off, but it had been like an hour since i applied. i was pretty good about getting it on the skin.

and is it okay that i skipped a couple months before that?

also, do people who walk their cats experience this regularly? do they just deal with the fleas coming in on the cat and then dying? or should i not be finding live fleas and be concerned? again, im in an area that gets them pretty bad just for reference. i say this because i asked my mom about our cat who was both indoor/outdoor and she said she never saw a flea.

lastly, is the fact that i found the flea in the same spot and not hopping/hopping away effectively a good sign?

We have a farm cat. He lives mainly outside but also spends time inside. Today, I found around 50 fleas on him. He is on a monthly preventative so I’m not sure what’s up. We live in South Alabama if that matters. Also, people say to treat the yard but we have 14 acres…there’s no way we can treat the whole area and he likes to go everywhere in the woods. Any help is greatly appreciated!

we’ve been through a multiple month long ordeal with my cat who had strange symptoms, like enlarged lymph nodes and random extremely painful episodes of muscle cramping, and the vet recently figured out that the source of the problem was toxoplasmosis (the other possibilities on the table were lymphoma and IMPA but we were able to rule those out… phew!).

this diagnosis makes perfect sense: the week before his first symptoms, he had been catching and eating an average of 5 mice per day. he LOVES to hunt, and he is a very high energy cat.

after clearing up his symptoms, we stopped the medication. but a week later, he started exhibiting them again… after another mouse killing spree! this time, the toxo count in his blood was even higher, so he’s gone back on the medication.

i’m stressed that this is just going to be a cycle of him going on killing sprees and then getting sick with toxo again. i’m wondering what we can do to re-direct his blood lust, and to compel him to hunt slightly less. i know this is just his cat instincts, but i feel like even slightly less hunting would do him some good. does anyone have advice on this? i’m thinking of switching him to raw food, and trying to stimulate his hunting drive with toys a little more, so any recommendations would be appreciated!

Disclaimer:
I hope this is the right place to post this. I have never posted on Reddit before, so if there is a better thread I could find advice in, please let me know.

My male, 6 year old, neutered cat has been an outdoor cat since he was about 1 1/2 years old. When he was 4 years old he was hit by a car and suffered from a broken jaw, lost an eye and a canine tooth. He was fed through a tube in his neck for two months. I paid for every surgery for him to survive because I love him so much.
The last two years I have kept him inside the house because I am worried for his safety. At first he had no desire to go outside, but since I have moved to a more remote area with less to none traffic he has started acting out and has made it clear he wants to be outdoors.
Almost a year ago I got another cat (that I plan to keep strictly indoors) in the hopes that it would help with his activity and stimulation, they have gotten along very well, but at the end of the day he acts out and is not content with being restricted. I have also tried putting him in fenced outdoor areas , but he is not happy about it. He just cries and wants to be let free.
The last time I let him out at my new place, he got stuck in the neighbours yard that had high fences. He lost a couples claws and was bleeding. For the most part, he is very coordinated, in the sense that you wouldn’t know he was blind in one eye. However, I am very scared of other animals getting him now that cars aren’t a factor. I guess after all the context, im curious if people think it’s a bad idea to let my cat outside again? I know regardless there is always something that could harm him. Would you consider it cruel to let a one eyed cat back out into the outdoors?
Thank you for your feedback!