Despite the fact that cats have been kept as pets for nearly 10,000 years now, they’ve still maintained many of the wild instincts they had pre-domestication. They long for the outdoors, where they can experience nature, roam new territory, and hunt for prey.
Unfortunately, living outdoors comes with a pretty serious set of risks for our small, furry friends. Dangers like vehicle traffic, predators (both animal and human), and poisons are all common encounters that cats face outdoors – so much so, that the average life expectancy of an outdoor cat is just two to five years, compared to an indoor cat who averages around 15 years.
Photo by Catio Spaces
On the other hand, keeping a cat entirely indoors is no happy ending, either. While they might not face outside threats, cats who aren’t allowed outdoors have been found to develop mental and physical disabilities due to not being able to express their natural behaviors.
Creating a healthy balance of indoor and outdoor time is crucial to your cat’s wellbeing. However, not every cat can be trained to stick to your house’s perimeter or come back after an hour’s time (if only it were that easy, right?). The best solution, if you have the space available, is to invest in a catio.
Photo via Catio Spaces
Catio is short for “cat patio” – basically an outdoor enclosure for your cat. These creative funhouses have seen rapid growth in recent years because they provide the perfect combination of outdoor enrichment and indoor protection, earning recommendations from countless veterinarians and other cat professionals. If you don’t mind investing a little time and effort to better your cat’s life, we’re going to show you exactly why your next home improvement should be a catio.
Mental health
As mentioned above, domesticated cats have retained many of the behaviors of their wild ancestors. Because of this, they need to be allowed to express themselves in order to meet their psychological needs. This includes activities like scratching, urine marking, hunting, and other forms of stimulation. Otherwise, they are more likely to develop a series of behavioral problems, which can lead to social conflict and even stress-related diseases.
Photo via Catio Spaces
Creating an outdoor shelter for your cat to roam gives them the personal and social experiences they need to satisfy their natural instincts and keep their sanity. They can scratch anything they want and mark anywhere they want without worrying of punishment, and they can monitor the birds and other wildlife in your yard much more intimately than sitting behind a window.
Physical health
Just like humans, cats need their exercise to stay healthy and fit. According to the Association of Pet Obesity Prevention, in 2016, nearly 59% of cats were found to be overweight or obese (is that crazy, or what?). While the average residential home allows for a decent amount of room for our feline friends to walk around, they are not designed to meet the unique needs of a cat.
Photo via Catio Spaces
As we all know, cats can jump crazy high! They love vertical space, and their instincts create desires to climb and leap places as if they were in the trees in the wild. In other words, walking across a carpet floor just doesn’t cut it. Building a catio gives you the ability to design the ultimate playhouse for your cat, with numerous places to climb, jump, and perch. This will keep their bodies physically fit while also satisfying those wild instincts yet again.
Safety
The mental and physical needs above are enough to convince you that cats need outdoor experience, but if there is one benefit that shows why catios are preferable over traditional outdoor living, it’s the benefit of safety.
While cats are quite smart, there are way too many potential hazards they can encounter while freely roaming the neighborhood. Someone could be driving down the street and looking down at their phone when your cat decides to cross the road. A hawk could be circling overhead and swoop down from above. Rat poison could look like a treat and become your cat’s secret meal of the day. The list goes on and on, with numerous unknown factors at play.
Photo via Catio Spaces
Catios allow cats all the outdoor experience they need, but without the added safety concerns. They can literally spend all day and night in there if they want to, and the biggest risk they’ll face is getting too hot or cold. Just make sure you keep an eye on them when the temperature gets a bit extreme!
Cleanliness
Cats are notorious for cleaning themselves – in fact, they spend up to 50% of the day doing so. While that’s true, they’re not completely traceless as they roam around the house. Hair, dander, and various other microscopic dirt particles can be left behind. This can build up and become bacterial (if it wasn’t already), which is bad for everyone, but especially for anyone in your household or visiting who may have cat allergies.
Photo via Catio Spaces
Catios create an entirely separate space where your cat can lounge, roam, and clean themselves, which seriously cuts down on pet dander within the house. In addition, a litter box can be placed within the catio, adding yet another traditionally-indoor activity to their outdoor habitat. This will not only keep your home cleaner, but it will also keep it from smelling. Anyone with a good sense of smell knows how strong pet odors can get if you’re not cleaning all the time, and catios do a great job at helping to minimize the effects.
Relationships
There are some times where all cats want to do is cuddle and play, whether it’s with your or with other pets in the house. Other times, however, they want nothing to do with anyone, and they want to be left alone. This goes back yet again to those natural instincts. Cats are solitary and territorial, so although they might sometimes be fun and interactive, they still always prefer a little time to themselves for private matters like napping and bathing.
Photo via Catio Spaces
Catios are perfect for both sides of their behavior. When they’re feeling interactive, you can join them inside their cat house for some play time (assuming your catio is big enough to fit you – many of them are). When they want to be alone, they’ve got a territory all to themselves for as much private time as needed. Respecting their needs for quality play time and quality alone time not only keeps their behavior in top shape, but it can also strengthen their social relationships with you and other animals.
Conclusion
There’s a reason why catios have become so popular within the last few years – they’re great for your cat! From maintenance of health and behavior to keeping the house clean, catios are the perfect way to give your kitty a taste of the outdoors without the hazards that go along with it. Best of all, building a catio is easy because there really aren’t any rules. You can custom-design one for your exact yard, making it as big or small as you want with any interior design you want.
Author Credit: This guest post was contributed by Cory Mercer who is a father to three fur babies, two kitties and one puppy. On paper, Cory rescued them – but the truth is, they rescued him. When he’s not outdoors hiking with the pup, you can find him at home binge-watching TV shows with all three at his side.
Photo Credits: All photos from Catio Spaces.
Oh I would so love one of these Catios for my two beautiful fur kids. They are indoor cats because of where we live and we lead walk them pretty much every day but it’s just not the same for them as being free to roam “outside”. Guess I’ll have to start saving.
Great article! One important reason to add is protecting the environment. Cats are an invasive species that kill billions of birds and small animals annually.
Agree – new studies support this. Their conclusion is not to get rid of cats, but to treat them as the pets that they are. I love my cat – but I don’t let her roam freely. I love my dog – but I don’t let her roam freely, either.
The study, published this month by the journal Biological Invasions, further claims that cat advocates have engaged in an intentional campaign of “science-denial” by claiming the negative impact of cats on native bird species has been exaggerated.
“Misinformation or denialism … increasingly poses a challenge for invasion biology,” stated the paper’s lead author, Scott Loss of the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management at Oklahoma State University.
“What is overwhelmingly evident based on the science is that maintaining cats on the landscape is harmful for cats, wildlife and people,” he said. “It’s time to treat cats like dogs and to safely remove stray and feral animals from our parks and neighborhoods.”
Great! It is an ideal place for cats.
Love these catios!
Response to Alan: humans are by far the biggest threat to bird species. The exponential population growth and vast expansion discussed above has left little land untouched by human development, modification, fragmentation, and pollution.
And so millions of bird deaths occur every year due to human activities—nearly 100 million from colliding with windows, 80 million from collisions with automobiles, and about 70 million from exposure to pesticides.8 Our own government tracks how many animals (birds included) it kills—over 4 million in 2009 alone.
In a 2000 report by the World Conservation Union surveying 1,173 threatened bird species, habitat loss was the most important threat, affecting 83% of the bird species sampled. As the World Watch Institute put it (emphasis added):
“…[P]eople have always modified natural landscapes in the course of finding food, obtaining shelter, and meeting other requirements of daily life. What makes present-day human alteration of habitat the number-one problem for birds and other creatures is its unprecedented scale and intensity
Thank you Diane! My thoughts exactly and it’s good to have the facts. While I don’t believe in letting cats roam outside unprotected, Alan is one of the reasons why.
Love ours! They are easy to put up and take down to move to your next home. We bought a huge dog kennel with canopy cover from a home improvement store, did some modifying to attach it to a pet door and added shelves. We actually have two attached by above ground tunnel. My 6 chase each other around in them. I’m in Arizona near mountains and the threat is real around us with Bobcat, Coyotes and Great Horned Owls.
I would love to do something like this on a small balcony in an apartment, especially to be able to put the litter box outside!
Many of them love the outdoor and being able to experience nature and roam through new territory. Thanks for sharing!!!
Thank you to Cory Mercer, the author of this well-written article. My twenty-year-old beloved calico was attacked by a neighbor’s dog and died three days later. I regretted so much that I let her come and go in and out of the house. Then learned about catios! My son helped pay for it as a gift to me. I now have nine cats. All of them love the catio. With all those cats you would think there would be odor from litter boxes, which I keep hidden. But, as long as I clean them out daily, there’s not a whiff.
Thank you Purrington Post for publishing your site!