Little Hawk

I'm with you in that I think most cats would rather have some time outside to explore than always be safe inside.  And the neighborhood can benefit from mouse and rat control.

Yes, having totally indoor cats can work really well for some folks.  But there are folks like me who travel a lot and a totally indoor cat would get terribly lonely and bored in my absence, even if someone comes by to feet him/her and change the litterbox.
Some organizations I contacted about getting a new kitty after Melanie and Poof passed on this summer were downright snooty to me when I told them I could not keep a cat totally an indoor cat.
This attitude would be fine if there were not enough cats to go around.  But that's hardly the case.  Lots of cats are "euthanized*" every year for lack of homes, and many cats meet unpleasant deaths from having to wander the streets, having no home.

But Grissy, an apparently abandoned housecat who had been on the streets for a few years, quickly became a homebody when I offered her a home.
If I couldn't adopt her without having her indoors all the time, she'd still be a stray.  Now that she knows she has a home, though she wants to go out sometimes (usually at night), she seldom leaves my porch or yard and is ready to come back in within a few minutes or hours.  If I let her out to the enclosed back porch (from which she can exit by going under the porch), she generally stays there until I let her in the back door again.

Better to have as many cats as possible have homes, even if they're allowed out sometimes, than to have a lot of truly homeless cats.

Genie

(Beautiful sphinxes, WD!)