What, cynics may ask, distinguishes a “catio” from a “screened-in porch”?
They clearly haven’t seen the catwalks that wind around Dan Reeder’s Seattle house and yard like a super-sized Habitrail with, as he wrote on his blog, “everything a cat could want in that place, including a catnip plant.” It features night lights for nocturnal prowls by his feline, Max, as well as a heated bed.
Or consider the complex structure, with bridges and mazes with 20 different levels, at the Monroe home of Dennis “Cathouse Man” Gallagher. Or the elaborate enclosure in Lehigh Valley, Pa., about which Julia Konya acknowledged in a how-to post on her design blog: “I’m sure a lot of my neighbors thought that I had finally lost it.”
The catio’s moment in the sun — in sheltermagazines, on social mediafeeds and even usedonCraigslist — was probably inevitable. As the cats in our homes (35 percent of U.S. homes have them) slowly take over their interiors (pet industry figures say 74 percent of pet felines have scratching posts, while 25 percent have “kitty condos”), it’s logical they would encroach on exterior spaces, too.
But for owners long shamed by vets and public service announcements urging that felines be kept inside, catios are a safe option for those desperately pining for the outdoors. And for bird lovers — cats’ greatest critics — they’re an appealing way to protect nature’s feathered creatures. In several U.S. cities, bird and cat organizations are teaming up to promote the enclosures on guided “catio tours.”
