I feel really guilty for not letting my cat outside 😞 I live with my parents and we adopted a 17 year old cat last November who was believed to have potentially been abandoned. She absolutely loves going outside in our back garden, but will only use the cat flap one way (to get out). For some reason, she really does not want to go anywhere near it when she wants to come back inside, so we have to open the door for her so she can come in. Because of this, we can’t let her go out when we’re going out, as she won’t be able to get back in. My parents have gone on holiday this morning and will be back on Friday. This means I can’t let her out in the morning as I have to leave to go to work. I wouldn’t mind if it was easy to pick her up and bring her back inside when I had to go, but she likes to go in bushes where it’s really hard to reach her, and she has hissed before when my dad tried to bring her in. I leave for work at 7:50 and don’t get home till around 6, which means the whole day she has to be inside and I just feel really mean because I know she wants to go out. Instead, she’ll just be asleep all day. She also cries at night to go out which is really loud, we don’t let her out at night but if she ends up being able to use the cat flap properly, I might have to consider it because she wakes us up throughout the night and is so loud I’m concerned she wakes our neighbours up too 😕

It is much safer and more responsible to keep your cat indoors. When they go outside they're exposed to a lot more potential dangers like foxes, coyotes, dogs, getting into fights with other cats, getting hit hy a car, being stolen by a stranger, etc. They also could wander off and just not come back. Also cats hunt and kill native birds which is harmful to the environment. I really wouldn't feel bad about keeping your cat inside for one day when it's for her safety. She'll get used to staying inside eventually.

@aurielle I’m in the UK where it’s more common to let them outside. I personally could never keep her inside 24/7, she loves being outside in our garden and doesn’t go very far. It’s for 5 days and I just feel bad because she loves it so much and is desperate to go out, it’s just frustrating she has an issue with coming inside using the cat flap

I know the pain, I had an outdoor cat which I needed to keep inside for medical reasons and she meowed a lot to go out as well, but she never did it at night. The cat will survive the 5 days, don’t feel bad. You’re doing the best you can.

@Yi_eune thank you 🥺

my last cat was an outdoor cat her whole life. one day she went missing, and a couple days later a neighbour let us know that she found our cat’s collar with torn up flesh, blood and fur. probably a coyote got her. my mom still insists on letting our current cat outside. a couple years ago he got some kind of animal bite that got infected so badly his organs were failing and he needed surgery. just because it’s common where you live doesn’t mean that it’s safe. i feel terrible guilt knowing that my old cat must have died so scared and in so much pain. we could have prevented it if we kept her inside, or only let her out on a leash.

@jorts22 I understand your concern, and I’m sorry that happened to your family. Thankfully we don’t have coyotes here and she never wonders far. She’s so happy being in our garden, I could never take that away from her.

My old boy used to prefer being outdoors and didn’t like having to climb his steps to come back in the house but despite foxes and other cats outside he never had trouble and he was more capable than we thought with coming inside when he thought he wasn’t being watched. Maybe you could help her built confidence coming back in through the flap by treating her through the flap?

@shaniqwa aw 🥹 we’ve tried all sorts of treats but she’s not at all interested! I’m wondering if it’s because the outside has like a slight tunnel to it where it scans her microchip that she doesn’t like it that way, so I’m considering getting a different one without the microchip scanner with as little of a ‘tunnel’ as possible that’s maybe a bit bigger too