Hello,

haven't visited the site for a while, but got some bad news as one of my (parents') Bengals was hit by a car the other day, and died about three days later at the vets.

We've had three out of three Bengals hit by cars, in the past eight years, only one surviving after being caged for 6 weeks whilst his hip mended. This is one of the pitfalls of letting your cats out, and living on a road that's used as a shortcut in rush hour.

We don't regret letting the Bengals out, as we back onto a few acres of woods and fields, which is not accessible to public, which is where they always spend most of their day. To keep them in the house, in my opinion, would not be fair considering how active they are.

Unfortunately it makes it harder and harder each time to replace them with another one, knowing the likelihood of the next one ending up under a car, but I think my parents will get another one sometime soon.

Do many people keep their cats indoors?

Hi BigJo

Really sorry to hear about your parent?s cat, they must be devastated. There has been a pretty big debate about letting your Bengal?s out; you might want to take a look at the <a href='http://www.bengalcatforums.com/forums//index.php?showtopic=6' target='_blank'>"Do you let your Bengal?s out"</a> thread.

We lost our first Bengal in January, he wasn't run over but we did use to let him out. We don't know what caused his death and because of this we won't be letting our new Bengal?s out, we've built a run for them instead. I know it's not the same but if you have two or more cats together they do a pretty good job of keeping each other active and if you get them altered they tend to loose the urge to want to roam!

Hope all goes well with any future Bengals

Heidi

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Heidi

Sorry to hear that Bigjo.... hearing more of these stories is making me want to keep Zeus and Hestia indoors more and more, we'd be devestated if anything happened to one of them. I don't know what it is about Bengals, but they seem to be car magnets, maybe they think they are invincible and the car will bounce off?