I've got a male tabby cat that is nearly 3 years old. We used to live out on a farm. He grew accustomed to living outside. We could barely get him to come in even to eat. Now, we live in an apartment, which is pretty large. We've tried to adjust him to indoor/outdoor kitty, but he hates every moment he's inside. Rain or cold weather just don't deter him from wanting to go out.
He stalks to door and flees every time we can't stop him quickly enough, then he'll take off for a long time. He always comes back home, but we live near a busy street in a college town, and I'm afraid someone's going to run him over. We try to only let him out at night, to curb his frustration with being indoors... but he yowls at the top of his lungs and it wakes most of our neighbors up, as well as ourselves. He even yowls if we let him outside, so I'm not sure what's going on there. When I frantically run outside to make sure he's not in danger or hurt, he comes prancing back to his door like nothing's wrong.
I've tried every trick I can think of to keep his desire to be outside at a minimum. We play with him to the point of our exhaustion, and he's a fantastic cuddle cat in the early evenings and early mornings. He knows that we love him, and we spend a great deal of time with both of our cats, so I know it's not lack of human interaction that he's missing.
I've never seen a cat crave for the outdoors like this. If he keeps it up, we're going to have to find another home for him... somewhere out in the country where he can chase birds and mice or whatever. But I love him SO much, and don't want to give up on him yet.
Any ideas of what can be done to encourage the 'indoor' kitty in him to come out?
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Originally Posted by emily_the_spoiled
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