[tzs]

How about keeping the cat indoors in the daytime and letting it out at night? Cats are naturally nocturnal so the cat should be happy with that.

As far as I've been able to tell where I am, everything out at night that a cat would be able to reasonably encounter is either too big for the cat to kill or something that I would like the cat to kill (rats and mice).

Well, I'm not sure about the weird floating blob thing that my cameras caught one night. It was a white featureless blob just floating in front of the camera jiggling around. I would have dismissed it as some optical effect, maybe some light somewhere shining right at the camera...except it was casting a shadow. It seemed small enough for a cat to take, but I have no idea what defenses it had. Here's the footage of the blob [1].

Also not sure what this thing is or how it would do versus a cat [2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/DUGe2BbORXOIQyQgmD65wA....

[2] https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/x0vVRDOYSJK9oaGArGUVfA....

[second--shift]

[1] appears to be a spider or some kind of bug, suspended by a web or fiber. It's really close to your IR leds, what's why it's blown out in white (overexposed) and casting a shadow into the distance.

[danaris]

Cats are not naturally nocturnal. They are crepuscular—active during twilight and dawn.

And putting the cat out for the night is still very bad, both for the cat (average life expectancy of outdoor cats is something like 50-70% that of indoor cats) and for the environment (they are an invasive nonnative predator species).