Can an outdoor cat survive a NE winter? <m>

[mjkacmom]

I live in NJ, and we have a neighborhood cat that a boy rescued as a kitten this summer from a quarry. She lives in their garage, but roams the neighborhood, and plays with the kids. She's very domesticated for a cat that's never been inside (although she tries to get into everyone's homes). I worry that it'll be too cold for her. There's no way a shelter will even take her - she's almost grown, and they wouldn't take her when she was a kitten due to overcrowding.

 

[Toby'sFriend]

If she has a sheltered area to go into, yes.


However the average lifespan for an outdoor cat is about 3 to 5 years. They very rarely die from bad weather. Disease, coyotes, foxes, large dogs, and automobiles are the chief killers.

 

[SharonLowe]

She can survive the weather but not necessarily the prey. If there are any fox or coyotes nearby, they will be hungry.

 

[jmpurdy]

It seems impossible that no shelter will take her. The local MSPCA will accept any cat and determine if she is adoptable once she is there. If you sweeten the pot and the cat is friendly, pass the hat and get her checked out by a vet, vaccinated and spayed and offer to give her to a good home with all of the services done. She will only procreate in the spring and add to the overpopulation if not done by spring. If she is truly living in a garage and being fed, she can be put on a waiting list for a no-kill shelter also. It may take awhile, but if she has someplace to be, all the better while she waits. Also, you can buy a disk that is microwaved and provides great heat under a thin blanket to wherever she sleeps. We call them a heat disk where I work. Really nice. Hope this helps.

 

[mjkacmom]

Thanks for the advice - no fox here, only racoons and squirels. Our shelters are filled with adorable kittens, which I think would be easier to get adopted than an adult cat who has never used a litter box. I'll contact them and see what they say. I think we're planning on getting her fixed and vaccinated, but I'm afraid of how her recovery will go living outside. She does have my used featherbed.

 

[Hannathy]

Thousands of farm cats survive winters far harsher than a mild NJ winter. As long as she has enough food-and she will need more, and a sheltered place to get out of the wind-very important and one that isn't wet, and drinkable not frozen water, she'll survive the winter. Now whether she survives getting hit by a car, poisoned by a sicky, catching a disease from a wild animal or rodent is another question.

 

[Plantlady]

Many outdoor cats live longer than 3-5 years.

One of our cats is about 14 years old. Outdoor cat.

My childhood cats lived equally as long.

If the cat has a sheltered place, I imagine it will be fine. We live in the midwest, and do bring the cats in when it is terribly cold, for the night, but they are tough cats. We do have a stray cat that we feed (have been feeding it for three years now) that we don't bring inside, because it is the meanest cat ever.. and it always survives even the super cold nights.

 

[Chattyaholic]

A former friend had outdoor cats, and they had blackened frostbitten ears. I don't think they had anywhere to go to get out of the weather.

We did have several outdoor cats (we live on a farm in the country) years ago, but always let them in the garage at night, or they could always get into the tool sheds/barn to get out of the severe cold and wind.

 

[Bust*A*Stitch]

My parents had a stray mother and her 2 kittens, and this will be the third winter for them to be together
They are feral, but will not attack so my father tolerates them.

He goes out and buys about 10 bails of hay every fall and builds them a straw igloo with to openings and places a heat blanket inside so its always at least in the 50's inside of it even on our sub 0 nights.

The 2 openings are so they can never be pinned down inside the shelter if there is a predator trying to get them.

The hay is expensive, but with open fields on 3 sides of the property they've never had a rodent problem, and up until this spring when the mother cat was most likely grabed by coyotes they'd had never been any large predator issues either.

 

[PatsGirl]

Outdoor cats should be fine if they can climb trees quickly and have shelter. An old-style dog house usually works well, especially if the door is too small to allow the bigger animals in. I have not had cats here at my house but my Mom always had outside cats. We do see the occasional neighborhood cat coming out my old doghouse though in the winter -- of course, my dogs (all 3 of them) never used it

 

[ASFCurly]

I grew up on a farm, we had outdoor cats that we got when I was younger, they lived to be 14 and 16, so it is possible. Though with the farm came numerous places for them to hide.

 

[maelstrom]

I'll preface this by saying that we have an extremely unusual specimen of cat...

Kitten is 19 years old and we live in New York. She has always lived outside, at the lumber yard my family owns. She came to us as a kitten (hence the name) and decided to stay. Up until a few years ago, she never came inside the store at all. She had free roam of the yard and outside buildings, but not the public store. She now comes inside during business hours and sleeps most of the day on her little cat bed. She goes back outside at night. She stays warm at night in the winter by curling up in the insulation stock. We're all amazed that she is still alive at 19 years old, but she keeps on chugging along.

So, yes, it is very possible for an outside cat to survive a northeast winter. But it all depends on the health and strength of the cat, potential attackers (we have coyotes here, and Kitten has gotten in fights with raccoons), and the ability to find a warm place to sleep.

We also had an outdoor cat at home for awhile, named Kitty (we are so creative). My dad built her a little house out of plywood and shingle, and we filled it with blankets, and put a towel across the doorway. If it was really bad out (nor'easter, blizzard, etc), we had a plastic storage crate (the kind where the door flips up on the front) with an old comforter inside in the garage for her to stay in. She lasted several winters with us. Then my parents made me give her away and I don't know what happened to her.

My advice is to build the cat a little hut or fortress like we did for Kitty. Cats are curious and s/he *will* find it. If she goes in the garage, that would be a better place for it, but outside would be fine too. We kept Kitty's outside house on our deck. And just keep an eye on the cat. If you notice it starting to act weird or anything, take it to the vet.