Is it bad for a cat to spend all their time indoors without going outside at all?

A simple example of enriching the cat's environment by a friend's husband who lives in the US.

A person on social media asked the above question. Another asked a very similar question: "How do cats stand staying inside their whole life?"

The questions go to that eternal debate about the necessity - it is believed by many - to keep domestic cats indoors full-time for their safety, for their owner's peace of mind and to protect wildlife.

Many more people are keeping their cats indoors full-time nowadays than in the past. If you go back far enough into the past, nobody kept their cat inside full-time. And in certain parts of the world, most domestic cat are community cats. They mingle between different owners. It is a very were loose relationship and they are all outdoor cats.

Cat domestication is still on a journey which started 10,000 years ago. It's evolving and it will be very different in 10,000 years' time.

I suspect that in 10,000 years' time all domestic cats will be full-time indoor cats. And I hope at that time cat owners will have done something about a major failing that is apparent to me nowadays.

This is that you can't just keep cats indoors full-time by locking the doors and windows on them. You can do that but if your cat is used to going outside, they will be unhappy. They will be confused.

But if you raise a kitten from scratch i.e. as a newborn and they begin their life indoors and they remain indoors it is more likely that they will be happy staying indoors all their lives. That's because of the obvious reason that they only know life indoors. That is their world.

So, the starting point is important. And equally important is how enjoyable you make the indoors for your cat. You must have heard the phrase "environmental enrichment". If you haven't it means converting the inside of your home to be equally suitable for humans and cats!

This is how the indoors should be for full-time indoor cats! Very few cat caregivers go this far. The words in the image are those of the constructor of the cat runs. Image in the public domain.

Very few people do that by which I mean making it equally good for both species. But some people do make the interior of their home more interesting for their cat companion. This would include variously:

• Providing lots of climbing materials such as cat trees, some of which might go to the ceiling;
• Providing cat runs which traverse the walls and go up to the ceiling!
• Providing little hidey-hole places where they can hide and sleep. They should be high up sometimes where they will feel more secure.
• Providing toys to play with and then playing with your cat frequently.
• Building a catio, which is a small enclosure attached to the home with a wire grill to the exterior so the cat can smell and see the exterior more easily. They can employ their senses to pick up all that is going on in the exterior.

Cats need to be able to travel vertically as well as horizontally. They need a den the sleeping which is covered. Cats like something over their heads when they sleep ideally. That is not an absolute requirement but it's a good recommendation.

So, the answer to the question is you can keep cats indoors full-time but there is an added obligation on the owner to make sure that their cat does not become bored. There are tens of millions of very bored full-time indoor cats in America and elsewhere. And they end up pleasure eating to relieve the boredom which leads to obesity which in turn leads to illnesses such as feline diabetes.

When people say their indoor cat sleeps all the time, it is no surprise to me because they have nothing else to do. They are not actually in deep sleep. They are simply snoozing, killing time, resting and zoning out. It is incumbent upon cat owners to really rise to this very difficult challenge of enriching their cat's environment if they are confined to it.

When they do it is not bad to keep a cat indoors all the time. If they don't rise to the challenge, it is bad! It is down to the caregiver to make it work. Thus far I have not seen enough - anywhere near enough - commitment to enriching a cat's indoor environment.

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There are some secondary issues which are perhaps obvious. It's much easier for a full-time indoor cat to live in a big house with many rooms. Lots more space. It's much harder for a cat to live in a bedsit in a high-rise apartment block. It's much harder to make the latter environment enriched compared to the former.

And also, there's the question of how often the owner is around. I believe that it's important that the caregiver is around a lot to ensure that the indoor cat is entertained. Perhaps I'm being too demanding and expecting to high a standard. But this goes back to the original issue about the added responsibility placed upon the caregiver of full-time indoor cats.

Do cats actually love their owners?

I think you've got to start this discussion with a definition of the word "love". And I think most people would agree that it means an intense affection for another. Although this is a very elastic definition. What I mean is that love is a very personal emotion. Different people have different depths of emotion for their significant other when they say that they love them.

And bearing in mind that the term is elastic and that the word "love" normally applies to the affections that a human has for another, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion that a domestic cat can love their owner, in their way, depending upon whether their owner loves them and treats them in a way commensurate with that love.

Love is a two-way street. A person can love another if that person doesn't reciprocate but it won't last. It'll fizzle out eventually. So, love feeds on the love of another. It is entirely mutual as I see it. The love of one magnifies the love of the other and vice versa.

So, taking that introduction into cat ownership, in the best examples, the cat owner loves their cat deeply. They care for them beautifully. They provide a beautiful, enriched feline environment for their cat which is thoroughly enjoyed. The caregiver feeds the best quality cat food and they spend hours together in play and cuddling.

Under that scenario, a cat will love their owner. I think it's impossible to come to any other conclusion. It has to be said, though, that we do not know what is in the mind of a domestic cat. At least we don't know what is in that mind accurately. We can guess through their body language and their vocalisations. But nobody has yet has actually truly read the mind of a domestic cat.

This mutual love between human caregiver and domestic cat is supported, I believe, by the fact that in this relationship the owner is a surrogate mother to an adult cat who feels like a kitten. That's because their every need is provided for. It's just like a cat mother is looking after their kitten.

This is a useful point to make because it supports what I have just said. A kitten is going to have a close connection with their mother and there will be a mutual love bond between them. That's exactly what the cat owner and their cat should replicate.

You can go further than that when the owner is imprinted on the brain of the cat that they are their true mother. This is when the owner has raised a newborn kitten and become imprinted on that kitten has a feline mother not a surrogate mother. And this imprinted mentality will be there for the rest of the cat's life. Under these circumstances there will be a special and super-close relationship of mother and offspring.

I think everybody would agree that the mother-to-offspring relationship is bonded by love and it doesn't matter what species of animal we are talking about.

But I have to return to the beginning and say that the word love is elastic. We don't know how cats feel except that we do know they feel contentment and pain. They are sentient animals. They indicate very strongly to us that they love being around us if we are good cat caregivers. 

They like to sleep on us and next to us. They like to lick us in a friendly example of allogrooming. They like our emotional warmth and our physical warmth. They like the way we smell. They greet us at the front door and they are thoroughly connected to us.

These are all the ingredients of mutual affection which when deep enough qualifies as love.

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The above section of this article was straight out of my head. That's me, Michael. I would like briefly to refer to the words of Dr. John Bradshaw who is a renowned cat behaviourist and who wrote the book Cat Sense. I'm referring to his book.

He says that domestic cats don't automatically love people. "Cat are not born to love people. It is something they have to learn when they are kittens-they do not automatically love other cats [either]."

In that statement Dr. Bradshaw is stating that cats have the potential to love people. He therefore supports what I have said above.

But the whole process of learning to love a person starts off with being socialised. Unless a domestic cat is socialised at an early age, they will probably never totally lose their inherent fear of humans. They will lose 99% of it if and when they are socialised later as adults but it is far better that they are socialised when they are newborn kittens. They lose the fear of people and then building on that they are able to love people especially their provider, their caregiver.

The video maker things cats can love their owners:

Do feral cats voluntarily come into people's homes?

Sometimes feral cats do come into people's homes. It depends on the circumstances. One of those circumstances is how feral the cat is. If the cat is hard-wired feral and totally unsocialised, they won't go into a person's home as it would be too frightening. Too many possible dangers lurking in a strange place.

Dorothy and Marvin. Marvin was a semi-feral cat that DW adopted and brought inside. He adapted brilliantly to home life.

But if the cat is somewhat feral and partially domesticated as is the case fairly often and if they are starving which is also pretty common, they'll take risks to get food and take their chances particularly if the home owner is apparently friendly or even calling them over and actively encouraging them to come in.

It is all about the competing feline emotions of fear and hunger. Both are linked to survival. The cat makes a decision on the best strategy in order to survive. Cats are great survivors which is why they have nine lives.

RELATED: Stunning beauty: extreme high grade 9 white spotting adopted feral cat.

Sometimes people confuse stray cats with feral cats. The stray is often domesticated and quite likely to come into people's homes looking for food or even a new caregiver.

Some cats can be quite bold in that respect. The almost ask to be adopted through their body language, vocalisations and behavior.

If the recipient person is in the mood to adopt, they do. There have been some great cat adoptions in this way.

But true ferals just run from the nasty hostile human! Well, not all humans are nasty and hostile but to true feral cats they are. They are an unknown quantity to be avoided.

So, that's the key to the answer to the question in the title. How feral is the feral cat?

This stray cat brings his feline friends to a Metro station in Istanbul

Ginger tabby owns the Istanbul Metro. Screenshot.

This video, for me, is a reflection of the relationship that Turkish people living in Turkey have with their stray cats. They have community cats in Turkey and Turkey has an ancient tradition going back thousands of years to be kind to street cats. That's the way I see it. There are two cat breeds which originated in Turkey namely the Turkish Van and the Turkish Angora. Although, in my view, they are one and the same cat breed. What happened was this: the cat fancy took one Turkish non-purebred community cat and turned it (selective breeding) into two different cat breeds. But that's my theory and I can't really support it.

The real Turkish Vat.

But the real Turkish Angora is entirely different to the American cat fancy version of the Turkish Angora. And something similar can be said about the Turkish Van.

The real Turkish Angora.

But to get back to the video, initially we see a ginger tabby enjoying sitting on the barrier to Istanbul's Metro. The reason why this cat is there is because it is warm. They enjoy the warmth coming out of the machine. 

And then people stroke him because he is adorable (the vast majority of ginger tabby cats are male cats). And when they stroke him, he might follow them down the escalator by sliding down the side of it as if he is on one of those ski slopes about to do a job at the end.

And at the end of the video, you will see that feline mates of his join him in Istanbul's Metro where they do exactly the same thing; sitting on the warm ticket barrier waiting to be petted. It is here that they get access to company and some interaction with humans. That's what they like.

They should be in someone's home. It looks cute and lovely in many ways but it is very sad in another way. They don't have a genuine home and a cat caregiver to look after them properly. That is the failure of community cats. People do look after them in an ad hoc way but they don't really get the kind of care they need such as veterinary care.

What are 'laces' in the cat fancy?

Laces refers to white fur on the back feet. You'll see them on some cat breeds like the Birman and Snowshoe. The Birman is a pointed cat with 'gloves' (white fur on the feet to contrast with the dark pointing). These gloves on the hind feet are referred to as laces. In the Birman the laces finish with an inverted V extended half to three-fourths up the hock. The hock is at the end of the foot and the beginning of the leg; the joint between the tarsal bones and tibia of a digitigrade. The cat is a digitigrade (walks on their toes).

Blue point Birman showing gloves and laces. Image: Wikipedia.

Full image credit: By Claudia Zaino - Albafeles Sacred Birmans, CC BY-SA 2.5 it, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2308036.

The cat fancy likes to use these terms that are applicable to human clothes. Another is 'britches' (or pantaloons) which describes the longer fur at the top of the hind legs of some cat breeds.