The Moral Permissibility of Feline Confinement - A Response to C.E. Abbate's Defense of Free-Roaming Cats

• Main Authors: Daval-Santos, Frances Paola L., Dimacuha, Maria Regina B., Fernandez, Seth Erin S., Yu, Jenson B., Dacela, Mark Anthony L
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: Abbate; feline confinement; feline ethics; hedonism; utilitarianism; Arts and Humanities
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/sinaya/vol1/iss1/3; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/sinaya/article/1004/viewcontent/3_Daval_Santos_etal_The_Moral_Permissibility_of_Feline_Confinement_1_1.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

The moral permissibility of indoor confinement has been a recent debate among philosophers C.E. Abbate and B. Fischer. Abbate, using a hedonistic framework, contends that cats should be given outdoor access to achieve their well-being. According to her, ethological pleasures can only be attained by cats outdoors because they can freely perform their species-normal behavior. Thus, she claims that it is the prima facie duty of the cat guardian to provide outdoor access. However, she fails to consider that cats can also experience pleasures even when they are indoors, so long as cat guardians can provide these for them. In fact, cat harm caused outdoors has significantly increased over time. Act Utilitarianism (AU) suggests that as long as the action produces the best possible results for everyone, then that act is ethical. In a world where there is constant environmental degradation and harm caused to wildlife, the debate on feline confinement is still prevalent more than ever. This paper shall argue that feline confinement is morally permissible using concepts on Environmental Enrichment and Symbolic Interactionism.