For context, I have a 9 month old kitten. My stepdad found him at work and he had no owner. After feeding him for 5 months, my stepdad finally managed to catch him and take him home.

A few months ago, I managed to convince both my mam and stepdad that it is best to keep Bonzo inside. This is because we live on a main road next to a bypass. Not to mention the fact that there are people in the area who starve their dogs and then set them off on any cat that they can find. There used to be so many cats in the area, but all of them were killed by dogs or run over.

Now that the weather is hot, my mam wants to have the windows and doors open. The only problem is that Bonzo will escape. Her solution to that is to let him outside freely. She claims that he will just explore the garden and then go back inside. I beg to differ.

I asked her why we can’t just get window screens so we can open the windows without Bonzo escaping. Her response was “because we can’t f*cking afford them, that’s why”.

Bonzo is my fourth cat. I can’t cope with losing another one. There is absolutely no way he is going to live a long life if he goes outside. When my stepdad was feeding Bonzo at work, he would always run out in front of the trucks that were coming into the factory. And he isn’t afraid of dogs. If he comes across one of those dogs that I mentioned earlier, they will easily kill him. My mam knows this yet she still thinks that it’s a good idea to let him out?

I have a tracker for Bonzo but my mam won’t let me put it on him because she thinks that it’s too big and bulky, even though it is literally the smallest tracker that I could find and it’s tiny compared to any other tracker that I’ve seen. So essentially what she’s telling me is that she’s going to let my cat go to this extremely dangerous place, all on his own, and I’m not even allowed to track him.

I am a teenager so I don’t get a say in anything. I don’t know what to do. I can’t believe she thinks that this is a good idea. Does anyone have any ideas for what I can do? I will see if I can buy the window screens myself, but I don’t know if I have enough money.