Cats kept exclusively indoors require carefully designed environmental enrichment to meet their behavioural needs and prevent welfare problems from boredom and frustration.
Indoor environments that lack enrichment represent a welfare risk through frustration of natural behaviours. Cats are territorial, solitary hunters who require opportunities to express predatory sequences even in play. Chronic boredom contributes to stress-related conditions including feline idiopathic cystitis. Well-designed indoor environments can meet cat welfare needs through provision of hunting opportunities, appropriate social interaction, choice and control over their environment, and comfortable resting spaces.