The debate over indoor versus outdoor cat keeping involves genuine trade-offs between individual cat welfare and wildlife conservation; evidence-based management strategies can optimise both.
The indoor-outdoor debate has clear welfare implications on both sides: indoor-only cats face risks of boredom, obesity, and stress-related disease; outdoor cats face road mortality, infection, and weather exposure but express natural behaviour more fully. The wildlife predation cost of outdoor cats is also a welfare consideration for individual prey animals. Evidence-based management seeks to provide outdoor behavioural opportunities while reducing risks through curfews, enclosures, and traffic-awareness strategies.