Originally posted by Kirsten
I think the quote is so low because many outdoor cats have accidents in their first year when they are still unexperienced and don't know the dangers.

Kirsten
This is true. I've noticed that an outdoor cat generally lives quite a long time if it gets past the hurdle of inexperence. The other thing is the high mortality rate of outdoor kittens *due to disease, exposure etc*...do they count kittens younger than a year the averages? If so, that would explain why the average is so low.