Sorry all, but I am one that feels that cats should not be free to roam out side. Besides picking up flees & ticks, eating wild birds, I see so many sleeping for ever on the roads. They can also be victims of cruel abuse by many. If you really love your furrbabies they should stay inside. My 3 live inside and are very happy. My dogs don't run loose either. JMO

Just the way I feel also. My cats are inside cats and never go outside. My dogs have always been contained in a fenced in yard, inside of a larger fenced in yard. Down to one small dog and she is in a small fenced in yard when outside and I am there with her. She has fun in the summer, trying to catch chipmunks but, they are too fast. She runs the birds out of the yard, doesn't want any visitors.

I live in the country and have inside cats that have been front paw declawed. They feel that the mice that do come in the house in the fall are toys to play with! Usually the mice die from exhaustion with the cats playing with them.

This is the reason Mr.Peach is confined to the house! He would love to go hunt squirrels, birds and rabbits. We have some pretty big and bad animals in our area and my crazy cat doesn't know how to climb a tree!

My tiger cat, Zipper, just turned one last week. He wants to go out but hasn't been outside alone since he was 7 weeks when I got him. He was born on a farm and never inside until I got him. He is declawed front and back because of my grandchildren that play with him so he will not be going outside alone. I put a harness on him with a leash and tried to let him walk around the back yard but all he does when he hits the grass is lay down and curl into a ball. He doesn't like walking in the grass. He will walk around on the deck and driveway but not the grass. He will, however, walk in the dirt and likes to roll around in it. It is rather funny to see him come to a dead stop at the edge of the grass and just stare at it. Maybe now that it is warmer outside and he gets to go out more he will get used to the grass. I have been thinking of making an outside kennel for him either on the deck or in the yard so he can be outside when my dog and I are outside but still contained.

So precious of a kitty.. Mine used to bring in grasshoppers and eat em while I ate breakfast .. YUMMY .. NOT !!! LOL

This reminds me of a story...years ago we were city people (Boston) who had just moved our family to a small rural town outside of Syracuse, NY. It was Thanksgiving, and we had family that drove out to visit. We had no sooner sat down to dinner than one of our dogs, a sweet-tempered Doberman cross, entered through the open patio door with the head of a deer in her mouth!!! Apparently hunters had poached deer on our land, cut up the carcass and left the head. To this point, our only experience with deer was the movie "Bambi!" Needless to say, we were all horrified! I guess Belle saw everyone bringing food for the holiday dinner and she wanted to contribute, too. No one in our family has forgotten THAT Thanksgiving!

OMG - can't believe the size of that creature! My son brought us an abandoned kitten recently and one day she was outside and had something in her mouth - it looked like a miniature aligator - I hollered for my DH to come and see it - he said it was a lizard - black. The next day I found the dead black lizard in her toy bucket. We would put her little fuzzy toys in a bucket on the patio and guess that she thought that was the place to put her new "toy".

My 16+ year old indoor kitty likes to catch her food too. She scoops the dry out of the bowl, and bats it across the room, then chases it yowling the whole time. Very cute, except at 3am. The wet she just carries around in her mouth, yowling around it. Love that, but for the day she brought me her present, and dropped the wet food beside my head on the pillow. UGHHhhh :)

Back in our old house, we were surrounded by empty lots, and tall grass. We ended up with mice in the house once, in the basement. One of them snuck up into the kitchen, and the 3 cats cornered it. Then they started making a bunch of noise that got me coming to see what happened. They all looked at me like they were saying "Mom! we caught this,... this,... thing, it really smells bad, can't you do something about it?" Not one of them actually tried to bite it or even touch it. I caught it in a cardboard tube and took it outside.

*sigh* My cats, the last of the great hunters.

We had a neighbor's cat bring us a prize. We had caught a few mice in the garage last month. I thought DH was disposing of them, turns out he was just tossing them under a bush and then we woke one morning to a dead mouse sitting on the deck. So glad granddaughter didn't see it.