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I can't help but think that, if we can assume that children and people, in general, need to be outdoors once in a while in order to be healthy and happy, the same might apply to cats. At the same time, I can appreciate the dangers that exist for cats who are outdoors, as I have lost a couple of cats. They were twelve and twenty-three though, which is longer than most people have their indoor cats. There are no clear answers to the question. There are places where cats are certainly unsafe, such as residential areas with hight traffic, because cats aren't very good with boundaries. Unfortunately, in rural areas, there are often other dangers, such as coyotes and fox.
I have raised four cats into their twenties who were allowed almost unfettered access to the outdoors, except that I would set the cat door so that it was one-way at night; they could come inside but not go outdoors again until morning. Since most people talk about their cats as being old when they are twelve, and I have two cats who are twenty-four now, I can't believe that this has been a terrible policy.
Yet, after losing two cats, probably to a fox, I haven't allowed my cats to go outdoors, but neither do I accept that it is wrong to allow your cats to go outdoors. In my case, my two older cats aren't so interested in it anymore and my younger cat has never been outdoors on her own, although I may allow her to in time.
Right now, I bring them out with me for a while every day, when the weather is nice, and they are pretty good with that. Ella, my one year-old, begs to go outside all the time now, so I might decide to let her at some point. I am not living at the same place I was at when I lost the other cats, and my cats have always been safe here. I have a home in mid-Maine, but we sometimes spend our summers up north, near the Canadian border.
There are dangers for children outdoors too, yet most people will concede that it's healthy for children to spend time outdoors. So we take reasonable precautions, and we encourage them to spend time outside, in the yard or in the park. Many people even send their children to school, despite the known dangers.
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