Moving from house to apartment

[fatcaptain1985]

Hi,

I'm moving from a house with a backyard to and apartment. I'm taking the family cat, Captain, with me. He loves going outside, and we let him out for a few hours each day. He's mostly an indoor cat though b/c we don't ever let him out at night b/c he runs off for too long. (And we learned our lesson about cats and coyotes at night the hard way.) But he does like going outside and wondering around for awhile during the day,

However, I will only have a balcony at the apartment building. He gets really mad when he doesnt get to go outside at least for a little bit everyday. I'm hoping he will like the balcony, but there isn't much room on it. I would never let him walk around the apartment complex either.

So my question is has anyone been in this situation (about a cat who likes outside but you are going to be living in an apartment) and what have you done?

The only 2 things I can think of are to make the balcony as comfortable for him as possible, and take him to my mom's new house every once and a while and let him out to run around.

 

[ccsr79]

Aren't you afraid he'll fall from the balcony? This might sound silly, but my mother's friend's cat actually jumped on the rail of her balcony and fell from the 27th floor (I don't need to say what happened to the cat...)

 

[sandtigress]

If your Captain would take to a harness and leash, maybe you can do that to let him wander around a little bit. At least then you'd be with him, and have a way to keep him out of trouble while he wanders around a little bit. Definately watch out for balcony jumping - I've heard of other cats doing it, though thankfully only from the second floor. Best of luck!

 

[fatcaptain1985]

Yeah, I have thought of that. If I do see that he likes to jump up on the rail, which is wood and would be big enough for him to sit on, I will put up flower boxes w/ flowers. That way he won't even be able to jump up.

 

[musicteacher]

My mother-in-law had a relative who lived in a 3rd floor apartment with a balcony. The building was made of brick. This man had a male maine coon who would climb down the brick wall of the apartment head first everyday, explore, and then climb back up to his apartment. The owner new about it and let it happen. My M-I-L says he didn't think anything of it. Obviously he was not a good cat owner, but the point is that you never know what your cat may do when it sees something on the ground. This particular cat learned that it could climb up and down the brick wall, other cats may not be so successful and the results could be unfortunate. I think your best bet is to leash and harness train this cat and take him on supervised walks outside. He should not be allowed unsupervised on the balcony, flower pots or not. Cats are mischievous, you never know what they will do.

 

[greycat2]

Mine are leash trained and are allowed to walk on lead only when we are with them holding the lead. They also have a balcony to look out through. So far we have been lucky they haven't jumped down.

Would the landlord/manager allow you to put up some sort of fencing on th deck?If not you can try to teach him not to jump or put a barrier of plants. Works well with mine so far.