JM wrote: "I know my kittens would not be as happy as indoor cats because of the determination they are showing to get outside..."
I had a cat that showed great determination to get into the file cabinet and the refrigerator, but I know she'd not have been happy living either place.
She was my first indoor cat, lived to be 20, and sold me completely on keeping cats indoors.This is a subject I do feel very strongly about, or I'd not be writing. Bear in mind, I do not feel smug about having indoor cats, and I certainly do not feel as if people who let their cats out are in any way worse people, or love their cats less. There are just a host of really good reasons to keep cats exclusively indoors, versus way fewer (if any) really good reasons to let them out.
Besides the reasons I mentioned on the other thread (basically all the dangers to the cat with resulting extra expense and grief), there are other reasons. Cats are very effective predators, and your bird-loving neighbors will not be happy to see your cats staking out their feeders and birdbaths. Populations of outdoor cats have been found to have significant impact on the local bird population. If your cat is not neutered or spayed (that's another soap-box entirely), it will be going around happily adding to the very serious pet overpopulation problem. And finally, if your cat spends a lot of time outdoors, you won't get the benefit of the cat's presence as much of the time, and you will miss out on a bunch of love and fun.
It is much harder to get an outdoor cat to adjust to the indoors than it is to just never start letting kittens out in the first place. You have a great chance with kittens to painlessly make them indoor cats. I had a stray cat I adopted that had decided to have kittens in a house we were working on restoring (that was a fertile house; wrens nested inside, too). We had her spayed, medicated the kittens (sooo much fun squirting gunk into baby kittens eyes twice a day) found homes for the kittens, and I tried to make her an indoor cat, but she was too terrified of the dogs. Even when she was kept in a seperate room, she would go to the highest point she could find and stay there. I finally relented and let her be my outdoor cat, figuring she had lived as a stray and was savvy about cars and such, but a couple of months later she was struck by a car and killed.
Just from this brief discussion, it's clear that several other people in this fairly small community have had similar experiences. I think that says a lot right there. Please think really hard about all that has been said, and don't let those kittens out.
Thanks for listening.