The majority of respondents lived in an urban environment with a relatively small garden, had multiple cats and a history of feline trauma associated with a road traffic accident. The effects of installation of the containment system and significant predictors of these four welfare subscales were assessed. This resulted in 4 subscales, 2 relating to positive welfare and 2 relating to negative welfare. Principal component analysis was used to reduce 21 potential indicators of feline welfare into fewer variables. Univariate analyses compared changes following installation on factors such as the amount of time the cat spent outside, other cats entering the owner's garden and owners' concerns about their cat outside.
The survey was circulated to customers over the preceding 2 years of ProtectaPet ® between May and June 2019 and gathered 446 responses. As part of the latter aim, we also developed a new feline welfare assessment tool based on the mathematical relationship between different measures. We surveyed owners who implemented a commercial physical containment system to the outdoors to evaluate their characteristics and the apparent impact of this system on cat welfare and owner perceptions. There is much debate over the pros and cons of allowing cats to roam freely as opposed to keeping them confined indoors. Animal Behaviour Cognition and Welfare Group, School of Life Sciences, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, United Kingdom.Luciana Santos de Assis * and Daniel Simon Mills