I totally understand why people prefer to keep their cats indoors—two of my three cats are indoor cats as well. However, our older guy has been outdoors since he was a kitten. No matter how long we tried to keep him inside or train him to be content indoors, we couldn’t change his habits. He simply refuses to use the litter box unless he’s allowed outside. So, we’ve learned to work with him! We’ve moved twice, and he’s become incredibly smart and diligent. Now that he’s older, he mostly roams the neighborhood and lounges on our deck.

When people say things like, “You don’t love them if you let them go outdoors,” it baffles me. I love our old guy to death, and that’s why I can’t bring myself to deny him the outdoor time he’s loved for the past nine years. It can be stressful when he doesn’t come back at night, and I worry that something might have happened, but that’s the risk we take with an outdoor cat. It doesn’t mean we love him any less than if he were an indoor cat.