My asshole cat

drferox:

My cat, Storm, is an indoor/outdoor cat, because we believe he deserves that freedom. He’s smart, tough, and always comes home (we lock the cat door after dark when he comes in). But he is a tomcat and gets into fights with the neighborhood cats.
Sometimes when he does get into fights, he gets abscesses from his wounds (this has happened twice).
The first time I was in eighth grade and I saw something white in his fur and so I got the tick spoon thinking it was an engorged tick. Only for it to start oozing. I screamed and ran to my mom who was in the garage and we had to clean up all the pus. He stayed in the dog crate overnight until we took him to the vet and they drained it.
The next time was this summer and I was lying in bed with him and saw a large lump on his hip so I told my mom and scheduled a vet appointment. The next day we took him in and they sedated him, lanced the abscess, and put tubes in and a cone on his head. He spent the week in a dog crate in my room.
That week was utter hell.
He would cry in the middle of the night and bang on the crate bars and pull at his cone. I didn’t get a wink of sleep. He eventually pulled out the tubes while I was walking my dog and he got the cone off.
Then he decided to be an asshole and pee on my favorite shirt.
Jerk.

Submitted by @hyenasnake

Not sure why you chose to submit this after reading the FAQ, since this isn’t where to send questions and this doesn’t look like a question anyway, but allow me to offer you some feedback.

Your cat is not a ‘Jerk’ for peeing on your favourite shirt. He probably doesn’t understand ‘favourite’ and in any case cats don’t pee on things out of vindictiveness or revenge. They urinate in unusual places, like sinks, bath mats, beds and clothing on the floor when they are stressed or have a urinary tract issue. He is not a jerk, he’s just a cat, and you’ve misunderstood him.

It would be ideal for your cat to not be getting into fights on a regular basis, whether you secure the yard, build an enclosed catio, or consider harness training. The ‘freedom’ you have decided he ‘deserves’ has been the freedom to get into fights, putting himself and the other combatants at risk. While this certainly drums up veterinary business, it’s not ideal for the cat. He will probably not come home one day, even if he is ‘tough’ and ‘smart’ he only has to be slow or foolish once.

He should also, if he has not already, get a Feline Aids test. And if he’s positive, he should not be permitted to free roam and infect other cats, which he will do.

This situation does not look like one of a cat being an asshole to me.

That was a week of your cat being in pain and trapped in a small box with no comfort or entertainment of COURSE he was upset! You have a very stressed cat. 

Get your cat neutered. Stop letting him outside to get in fights. Something is going to kill him, no matter how tough or smart he is. If he manages to survive, he is going to be in pain many times in his life, and he is going to spend a significant amount of time in serious distress, which you may not even know about because of how good cats are at hiding their pain. 

He may be tough, but there are wild animals that are tougher, and there are animals that move in packs. All it will take to take him away from you for good is a particularly fast raccoon, a large dog that catches him off guard, several dogs that corner him, a coyote, a large owl or othe bird of prey, a car that comes out of nowhere, a human who hates cats, a human with a rifle who mistakes him for a pest animal, a lingering infection from an abscess you don’t notice, bleeding to death from eating poisoned rats, and the list goes on and on.

In addition, he’s killing small animals, slowly, violently, needlessly, because that is what cats do when allowed to go outside.

Since you haven’t neutered him, he’s probably responsible for a lot of litters of feral kittens that are going to live short, violent lives, and may not even make it to adulthood. 

You need to take better care of your cat. There are many ways to keep a cat happy indoors, where he won’t come back with massive abscesses or potentially never come back at all. Start acclimating him to spending more time indoors, and start setting up your house to work properly for an indoor cat, before you lose him.