Nine Lives Go Faster Outdoors
Archaeologists believe cats first passed through the doorway of human shelters 3,500 years ago in Egypt, thus crossing a threshold to become domesticated pets, joining dogs, tamed 9,000 years earlier.
Recently in Chicago, an international panel of pet experts said it is time for cat owners to close the doors permanently on their cats and never let them venture outside again.
“It is very dangerous for cats to be outside, especially in urban environments.” said Gary M. Landsberg, a Toronto veterinarian and pet behavior consultant.
“There are fleas, territorial fights, contagious disease, cars. The life expectancy for cats that are allowed to wander loose in urban areas is two to three years on average. Indoor cats, the ones never allowed outside, live 15 years or more.”
Landsberg was one of eight cat experts who spoke to the American Veterinary Medical Association’s annual animal welfare forum. The forum was devoted to the welfare of cats, now America’s most popular pet, but an animal still treated shabbily compared with dogs, the pet specialist said.
Americans keep an estimated 58 million cats as pets, compared with 54 million pet dogs.
Another 60 million cats live “wild” in this country in a fashion that humans never would tolerate if the animals were dogs. These are feral cats that either escaped from or were abandoned by human owners.
They collect and live in colonies, as unowned alley cats, for example, tolerated because they hunt rodents. Sometimes they are rewarded by restaurants with table scraps.
The pet experts agreed there are far more cats than there are willing humans to care for them. That is resulting in short, unhealthy, unhappy lives for millions of animals.
Estimates of unwanted cats annually “put to sleep” in animal-control facilities and shelters range from 3 million to 20 million.
“The disease is overpopulation,” said Carter Luke, vice president of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “Euthanasia of cats is the No. 1 killer.
“Cats may be more popular these days, but still they are second-class citizens compared to dogs. People don’t value cats the same way they value dogs.”
Americans, he said, take their cats to veterinarians less than once a year for medical attention, spending $2.3 billion annually on medical bills. They take their dogs to the vet on the average of twice a year, spending $4.6 billion.
House cats, Luke said, have a 25 percent turnover rate every year. One-fourth of the pet cats in American homes this year will be somewhere else next year - dead, abandoned, owned by new masters or left in an animal shelter.
“The way people acquire their cats has something to do with this,” he said. “About 65 percent of all house cats adopt their owners rather than the other way around.
“Cats just sort of show up. They appear at the back door one day and start hanging around, endearing themselves. Friends move away and leave their kitty with you. Your kid goes off to college, and his cat sort of becomes yours.
“Dogs are different. People more often than not make a conscious decision to go buy a dog. Having made the decision and the investment, they are more careful about caring for the animal.”