Why is my cat turning feral?

September 15, 2011 8:59 AM

Why does my cat keep running away from home, and how can I get him to settle back down?

I have two cats. One is a smaller, younger, spayed female. The other is a large neutered male. They are primarily indoor cats, but I will occasionally let them out in the yard when I'm home to keep an eye on them.

Lately, my neutered male cat (Whitman) has been running away. The first time he ran off, both cats were out in the yard and he just took off behind the house. I couldn't find him for over a week, and then he turned up in the abandoned garage next to my house. I caught him and dragged him back home.

Since then, I haven't been letting the cats out at all. But Whitman has been hanging out behind the front door, waiting for me to open it. He's escaped five times in the past month. When he escapes, he is drawn like a goddamned magnet to the freaking abandoned garage, where he stays until I come get him. I don't think he likes it in there: he always seems very happy to be back in his warm, dry house with his cat food, and I can hear him meowing pitifully when he's in the garage.

I am trying to figure out what's causing this behavior, and how to get it to stop. I don't think he's been having problems with the other cat: I see them cuddled up together pretty frequently, although they do also occasionally have minor scuffles (but it looks like playfighting to me). But I really don't want to keep having to pull my cat out of a dirty old garage twice a week. Also, the garage is apparently a valuable spot in the eyes of stray cats: he has gotten into several fights over the garage with local strays, and although he apparently is fierce enough to kick all their butts, I don't want him to get some sort of awful disease from them. He's a rescue cat with a lot of weird behaviors to begin with, maybe that could have something to do with his sudden desire to live in a filthy abandoned building? Should I just get him a ton of vaccinations and some extra flea medication and tell him "bon voyage?" What the hell do I do with my weird-ass cat who's hell-bent on escaping my house?

posted by kataclysm to Pets & Animals (11 answers total)

It'll most likely taper off after awhile. Keep something near the door to shoo him with when you're on your way in and out, spray him with water whenever he's near the door, etc, and he'll get the idea that the outside is not for him anymore. He still thinks that the outside is his and he needs to periodically go make sure that's still true! I had a cat for awhile who'd been adopted from a stray who would literally push screens out of windows if she could to get outside... and then mostly just flopped over on the pavement right outside the door to sunbathe. It took her a couple months, but she got used to the new status quo. She would sometimes still try to sneak out, but mostly it became a non-issue.
posted by gracedissolved at 9:11 AM on September 15, 2011

Most likely he is curious about the realm beyond the yard, now that he knows it's there (being a cat and all). And unfortunately there really is no way to "train" a cat out of this: as small opportunistic carnivores, the drive to explore is deeply embedded in their nature (and remains there regardless of neutering status or being well-fed at home).

I have 4 cats myself and while they all love the outdoors, I find I have to limit their exposure to it according to their personalities. My scaredy-cat Brodie rarely gets to go out at all because I figure he would likely hide under a bush for days if anything spooked him. His brother Shadow gets the odd leashed excursion and only very rare supervised/unleashed yard trips because while bolder than Brodie he is stubborn and hard to coax back inside. Sister Coraline is the only one who ever gets to go out when I am in, and even then I set a timer for 10-20 minutes and look out the windows often to make sure I can see her. Nikki, my middle-aged Siamese, used to have yard privileges but has been on house arrest since she ran me up $1000 in vet bills last year due to fight injuries.

All that said, if you are serious about wanting to provide outdoor access at all over the long term you really ought to think about installing a cat enclosure or modifying an existing fence to make it escape-resistant. Because you really cannot rely on any cat to just decide to stay where you can see him.
posted by aecorwin at 9:18 AM on September 15, 2011

Also, maybe try letting him out before mealtimes only, so at least he learns to associate home with "guaranteed dinner".
posted by aecorwin at 9:20 AM on September 15, 2011

If stray cats hang out in the abandoned garage, and he was there for a week recently, he might feel like it's his territory and he has to regularly defend it against the strays, or at least check on it to mark it as his.

If you can get anyone to do something about the feral cats that use it, and then clean the garage/spray it with something to hide the smell of them, that might help.
posted by lollusc at 9:22 AM on September 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

I would just be patient. Every time one of my cats develops an undesirable behavior (most recently: screeching, top-volume meows at 3:00 a.m. while clawing at bedroom curtains), I panic and think it will be like this for the next twelve years and then a few weeks later they stop doing it and move onto something else. He'll eventually forget his time roaming around the outdoors and will stop trying to escape.
posted by something something at 9:24 AM on September 15, 2011

Leash train him! Get a cat walking jacket and take him on a daily jaunt around the yard. Since he'll be on a leash, and supervised, you can just bring him in when you're done.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:41 AM on September 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

Maybe he is hunting? My older cats had a field day with a nest of baby bunnies in our back yard for a long time, then there is the mouse present they left for us in the hallway... and now they are after birds and heaven only knows what else! Fortunately they don't seem as inclined to bring them inside since the introduction of a kitten (who they have been vastly scared of). Of course they are spending even more time outside than they used to. Pretty sure that behavior is going to change with the season, cold = all 3 cats living inside with minor scuffles.

I'd be inclined to install a pet door, then he can manage his ins and outs, ours has 4 options, one to lock them in if they are in (they can still come in, but locked when they get there), lock them out if they are out (they can still go out, but locked once they get there), open, or totally locked up.

If you would specifically like him to stay out of the garage, spray the floor, window frames, door, etc with white distilled vinegar, they really don't like the smell and it will keep him from going in there, may need to "respray" periodically.
posted by Jayed at 10:03 AM on September 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's the lure of unconquered territory, as others have said. My cat drove me batty trying to get into the hall closet for a while. He was absolutely sure I kept all sorts of wonderful mysteries in there. I've had zero success in convincing him otherwise, but I have managed to teach him not to yowl furiously in attempt to get me to open the door. It took a couple weeks of completely ignoring him, but now he just gives the closet a mournful look when he passes by.
posted by backwards compatible at 10:28 AM on September 15, 2011

It's possible you might have a cat who is just plain dumb as soup when it comes to the outside. Not trying to raise any hackles with this characterization, I used to have one as well. He was lovable and had more personality than any other cat I ever had, but he also had the memory of a gnat when it came to him going outside.

Normally it wasn't a problem as he'd just stick to the yard, but every so often he'd explore a bit beyond the yard and suddenly I'd be out there at 3 in the morning with a flashlight looking in neighboring yards for him until I found him, usually only a yard or two away bawling his head off because he's lost (despite being able to SEE OUR HOUSE FROM WHERE HE'S SITTING). So I'd pick him up and take him home and for a day or two he would be content to stay inside but after that he'd want out again, so I'd let him out and a few months later the cycle repeats..
posted by barc0001 at 4:52 PM on September 15, 2011

My cat has started doing this, too. He's a strictly indoor cat, one that we picked up as a stray kitten. That was a couple of years ago, and in the last couple of weeks, he's decided that what he really wants is to go out the front door when one of us leaves or comes home. The Boyfriend said he slipped by him this evening, only to saunter into the corridor and have a look around before he could be retrieved.

I figure it's a phase, one that'll pass. I don't know about your cat, but mine is all about his phases - he'll obsess over something for a while, and then drop it for no reason I can understand. For a while, for example, it was his sovereign duty to come and supervise when I got dressed for work. Now? Not so much. Only he knows what he's thinking, and I wouldn't even put money on that....
posted by MShades at 6:32 AM on September 16, 2011

I adopted a stray male, and he also has an intense desire to be out a lot. Even though my cat's fixed, I've been told that certain hormones mimic the male hormones that make males act like males. For my cat, that seems particularly to happen on full moons, or unusually warm weather.

And generally, the need to be out and hunting seems as deep and meaningful to a cat (who's experienced it) as need to have a home, bond with other cats, humans, etc.

Personally, I think cats should be allowed outside--it's just too much a part of who they are to deny it to them (and, on a larger philisophical issue, yes, after seeing how animated and alive my cat is after a good outdoor hunting session, I'd rather him have 5 years of living as an indoor/outdoor cat than 15 years as an indoor only cat)

My cat has a regular schedule of being let out in the morning and then coming home (usually after I call) at night. Sometimes, he'll spend 36 hours away from home. Hopefully, if you set up a regular schedule, your cat may settle into this sort of thing.

I've had a cat in past who lived this lifestyle in an area with lots and lots of predators (coyotes and fischers) and though he once came home beat-up, what killed him was carcinoma from vaccine from the vet, not living his natural lifestyle.
posted by Jon44 at 7:38 AM on September 24, 2011