cats

My cat is also a wanderer. My wife picked him and his sister (now deceased) off the streets of Asbury Park. It's funny because she was there working with the homeless population and came home with homeless cats, she really cannot help herself.

Rudi was a homebody and a mess of an individual, diabetes, mean but also always up in your business. She died after she swallowed something and it got stuck in her intestines. $10k for a surgery with a 10% chance of success wasn't it, unfortunately, so I had her put down in our home, which I like to imagine was easier for cat who hated getting in cat carriers.

Bruce Willis is an animal and has fought remaining indoors since we brought him home. If it's raining, or if it's too sunny, or sometimes not sunny enough, he will stare out the open door and then walk back in the house. He will also scratch at the door from the outside to come in, I will open it, and he will wander away. But every neighbor knows him because he just goes to everyone's houses. Some people feed him, it is what it is. He's not fat so whatever.

He is uncollarable so he is just a black cat that roams, and has been for the last decade plus. He has outlived, as far as I can tell, the rest of the stray/other neighborhood cats that we used to see, grey cat, big black cat, orange cat. He used to fight them. Sometimes he comes home injured. I dunno, it's just the life he likes to live. If he's inside at night, you can bet he will wake me up sometime between 1 and 3am to go out, and will not take no for an answer. So when it's between outdoors or just locking him in the basement, the basement seems cruel. I know people will say he may meet his demise this way, but I honestly think he'd rather that than wilting away in the basement, although he absolutely wilts away in the basement on the couch all day, just not at night.

maybe don't let your cat out and be a responsible owner then?

Get him chipped if you haven’t already.

I've had cats before that have conviced all the neighbors they're starving. They'd go to each house in turn to spend a night there before coming home

They know what they're doing

Ok but keep your cat indoors and on a leash outdoors.