If you love your cat, keep it indoors because:

• Cars kill millions of cats each year.
• Outdoor cats are exposed to serious and often fatal infectious diseases such as feline leukemia and rabies.
• Parasites such as fleas, ticks and intestinal worms pose a health threat to your cat. Some of these can be transmitted to humans.
• Cats outdoors are often chased by dogs or other cats, and killed, injured or hopelessly lost.
• Cats are often shot at, poisoned, trapped or tortured by neighbors annoyed by cats using their gardens as a litterbox or hunting birds and other small animals.
• Coyotes, great-horned owls and other wild animals are known to regularly kill and eat house cats.

If you love wildlife, keep your cat indoors because:

• 4-5 million birds are killed by cats each day.
• Collar bells on cats don't work because birds and other wildlife do not associate bells with being stalked.
• Ground-nesting birds are particularly susceptible to predation by cats.
• Cats will hunt small wild animals, despite how well fed they are.
• Almost all young birds leave the nest before they can fly well and spend a day or two on the ground. As these fledglings are learning to fly, they are frequently caught by cats.
• Most of the birds caught by cats, but not killed outright, die of their injuries or infection.
• Cats that kill small rodents can eliminate a critical food source for owls and hawks.

In general, cats that spend time outdoors require more medical treatment and their lifespan is much shorter.