Hmm, well that's an interesting anecdote.

Back in the 1960's, when I was a boy, my grandparents had a cat, a spayed female, who was an avid hunter. She was sweet as can be with us, but when she went outside she was death incarnate.

Her particular prey of choice was gophers. We had a vacant lot across the street from my grandparents' suburban home, and that was her stalking ground. She would drag home dead gophers as big as she was on a regular basis, and often came back with her front paws bitten bloody. I guess she must have been fishing down the hole when they wouldn't come out to play.

So we would take her to the vet to be patched up, and she would limp around on bandaged paws for a week or two. But as soon as the bandages came off, she was Diana the Huntress again.

My grandfather cursed the expense of the vet, and my grandmother worried about her beloved pet, (in spite of regular rabies vaccinations), but it never even occurred to them that keeping the cat indoors was an option. Their view was that an animal had to have access to the outdoors, and that was that.

I suppose the only point of this story is that attitudes have changed enormously in the last 50 years, and not entirely for the better.