In article , wrote:

In rec.pets.cats.health+behav Arthur L. Rubin
wrote:
Anyone who keeps a cat indoors 100% of the time -- believes
in improving the quality (and quantity) of life in the cat.

Well, I'd say quantity, quality I'd not say that. There's just so much to
see and explore outside where indoors everything is the same most the
time.

That being said, I think my cats live happy lives indoors though one would
really love to go outdoors. He finds thingsthat make him happy though.

Alice

I suspect cats who've never been outdoors are totally happy with their
restrained way of life. But I've seen cats that once had an outdoors but
later ended up apartment cats, andtheir longing looks outside, and their
recurring attempts to make a break for the outside when the door opens,
makes it fairly obvious they're dissatisfied.

My sadness in seeing the cat leash laws spreading like wildfire is that
cats were the one wild animal that we domesticated without pens, cages, or
ropes. After a few thousand years of ranging around our homes and always
returning to us, now outside forces (OUR OWN overpopulation and
increasingly crowded conditions) impose decreasing liberty on an animal
that in no way requires these restrictions for themselves or for their
keepers to be happy with them. It is largely people who either dislike all
cats, or at least dislike cats other than their own, who have decided all
cats must be imprisoned or leashed, making even so little as lounging on
the public sidewalk in front of their own homes punishable under law.

But as I said, I'm old enough I remember when chickens and dogs ran loose
in the neighborhood, with few or no repurcussions. Being forced to
imprison our cats is just one more free choice whittled away from us. The
day will come when anyone who refuses to pay the Air Tax will be arrested
and placed in the suffocation tank, with our heirs still responsible for
the cremation costs & ash disposal tax. Nothing we take for granted, not
even the freedom to breathe, is off bounds for restriction & taxation.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/