I've always been a cautious supporter of cats being able to go outside. I knew the risks, and experienced the consequences several times: My cat, Smash, 9, broke his leg some years ago falling off the balcony on the second floor. Something the vet laughed mockingly at, having never met a cat injured from such a low height. And, to be fair, I could have easily hopped down there myself. I guess he just landed funny... and is fat.

As minor incidents continued, I got less and less enthusiastic about the idea of outdoors cats without having a really safe, walled off environment guaranteed to be zero risk. One time, I had to pay several hundred dollars for a specific kind of blood test, only to find he had some kind of mite which can be removed with some $1 pack of liquid. Argh!

And although he was very well protected and 99% of the time stayed within the boundaries of the bamboo garden, there was that 1% of the time he would follow another cat outside where the cars were driving around (albeit under 10mph, and infrequently, but still).

My other cat, Chompy, is a hunter. She would occasionally bring in beautiful butterflies inside, under the bed, and shred 'em up. Oh I hated it.

So...my natural instinct to give them as much freedom as possible out of love or something, started to wane.

The Sickness

Smash recently got sick. At first I thought a simple cold, with a couple of sneezes and a leaky eye, general lethargy sleeping under the bathroom sink - but still eating, drinking.

It was a bit strange; where could he have gotten a cold from? He hasn't been outside for 2 years. Then he got a nosebleed and alarm bells really started ringing for a bit.

Turns out he has herpes, which, acting as an immune deficiency, enabled a bacterial/viral respiratory infection.

This was, to be honest, somewhat of a relief. While waiting an hour for the blood test, my mind was going to all worst case scenarios, remembering his mother dying from organ failure from something she was born with, the pregnancy finishing her off what was perhaps inevitable.

Some sources say up to 90% of all cats have herpes. There's no cure, it's lifelong, but it comes and goes. Sometimes, they may never show symptoms, though stress can be a trigger. Even when it doesn't express itself, it's highly contagious.

There's no way I could ever track the source or the blame. Pointless to try. Any cats sharing food and drink, cleaning each other, or just hanging out. A cat can be born with it from a herpes mother. My cats used to go outside and any brief interaction with the cats out there. Any time, any place.

And although it was a relief, it's no small feat to deal with. Not only do I have to keep him de-stressed forever if I don't want to increase breakouts like this, but I have to actually deal with the breakouts, and that has been annoying as fuck, if I'm honest.

Medicine Time

Smash is not only fat, but very strong, very stubborn, and very, very wriggly. He's also quite the tactician, so the expectation of wrapping a calm cat in a towel as to avoid stressing him out and calmly feeding him pills like they demonstrated to me at the vets when he decided to behave, was thwarted by reality. It took me 45 minutes to get a single pill in his stupid mouth. Who knew cats could spit things out?

Dreading the idea that I had to do this two-way torture for two solid weeks including two pills, eye drops FOUR times a day, and an entire syringe of gross liquid, I employed the help of my wife who I recently contractually bound to me. There was just no way I was going to do this every day alone, especially when he started to catch on in advance.

Does this look like a cat who is gonna take that shit every day??

Now that's a herpes face right there

While I did the towel wrapping and pinned him with all my might between my legs, she force fed him. This was still not easy, and at one or two points I got a little freaked out because his tongue and lips went purple. I was very, very careful not to choke or anything around his neck so I can only guess his extra wriggliness was doing damage to his own breathing. Of course I let go immediately and had to re-strategise the next time.

A couple of days of this and, with new skills and experiences unlocked, I attempted once more to do it myself, and to my glorious surprise I managed with almost no issue! By pinning him down on the sofa's grippy cover, he could wriggle less, my legs could create a better defensive wall, and I could get everything down his throat much more quickly. No blue lips, no Battle of the Ages.

He still sulked under the dining table for a bit, but he was lying on my chest again in no time.

Don't Panic!

As of writing, Smash looks tip top condition already and is being his usual, noisy and attention seeking self. His eyes are looking fresh and handsome as always:

Ok maybe I use the term 'handsome' a bit too liberally, but hey.

There's no reason for me to worry about my cats lifespans being affected, and as long as I stay on top of things, nothing serious should come of it.

Freedom?

So yeah. Short of a utopian cat-catered space, I declare my cats to be indoor cats, and you probably should too, unless you want to go through agonizing battles of pill popping and beyond. Remember, Herpes is very contagious. It is an absolute guarantee that all three of my cats have herpes hiding beneath the surface just waiting to pop out now. There's no escape!

Also it's just nice to know you're not contributing to the eradication of entire species as cats do in, say, Australia.