Indoor-only versus indoor-outdoor cat keeping involves genuine welfare tradeoffs between safety from external hazards and access to behavioral enrichment that free-roaming provides.
Indoor-outdoor cat welfare involves a genuine tradeoff between safety and behavioral enrichment. Indoor-only cats are protected from significant mortality risks but can suffer from boredom, obesity, and insufficient behavioral expression without adequate enrichment. Outdoor cats have richer behavioral lives but face mortality and injury risks that dramatically shorten their lives. The welfare-optimal solution is typically not pure indoors or full outdoors but enriched indoor environments supplemented by safe outdoor access — catios, harness walking, or enclosed garden spaces. This approach captures most of the behavioral welfare benefits while mitigating the most serious safety risks.