Nightlights?

Should I have nightlights in the house for George (he's 5 yrs olds)? Especially in the kitchen near his food? There's not a lot of moonlight in the kitchen and he seems to find his food/water okay in the middle of the night but I was just wondering how much cats can really see in the dark? Or would the additional lighting just give him the idea that it was earlier than it really was - and he already knows when it's 4am cuz he thinks EVERYONE should be awake at that time!

I have them all over the place. Deaf kitties don't hear me coming, so I was stepping on them both. The blind kitty likes to leg weave, so I kicked her a lot. And PJ & Punky in my bedroom are just naughty. I stepped on them a lot too until I put in a nightlight!

We have a night light in our cats "closet" area that has their litter boxes, water and food. It has never seemed to mess them up with time wise.

Don't think they need them at all - have had lots of cats for lots of years and never used any 'extras'. All were able to find anything in the dark and never had 'dark-related' accidents (they leave those to us :-).

It's a myth that cats can see in the dark. Their pupils become large to allow more light in, so that they can indeed see better than we can, but they do need some light in order to see.

I see no harm in putting a night light up for the kitties.

I have cats and a parrot, and parrots need some light at night because they have very very poor dim-light vision and can fall and hurt themselves thrashing around in panic if something wakes them suddenly in the dark.

Because of this, I don't have a nightlight as such, but I leave the light on in either the kitchen or the toilet - all our internal doors have a glass panel above them and that lets enough light through to the bird room for the parrot, but not bright enough to prevent him sleeping (they are completely diurnal).

Having that light on at night doesn't affect the cats' routines in the slightest, and it makes it far less likely that I will tread on Sonic if I get up in the night! He's too dark to see even if there's moonlight coming in, and he does so love to get underfoot

ETA: As others have said, cats can see well enough outdoors with moonlight, but they can't see if it's totally dark - they can navigate quite well using the other senses though, so even if it is dark would still be able to smell where their food and litter box are, and remember the route there. I think a nightlight is a good idea though.

I also have a bunch of nightlights, for me and my cats. I've never liked the idea of leaving them in total darkness overnight.

I have one in our kitchen, and one next to the litter box in our living room. When we go out of town I put one in the bedroom. DH doesn't like it up when we're home (too bright for him to sleep. But our bedroom window we have to leave the blinds up 4-6" anyway, and the curtains open a bit at night so the cats can get in it. So usually we can see in the bedroom a little at night.

If we had a good outlet in our bathroom I'd have one in there too. I hate having to turn lights on during the night.

I use the ones that say only pennies to operate every year. There's no bulb in them.

I have nightlights in each room at night (except our bedroom) so everyone can get around in the dark. (including us! don't want to step on one of them accidentally!)

I have nightlights in every room of our house and one on each stairway.
Mostly for us rather than the cats...( I did put some of them up for Gracie, she doesn't see very well even in the day time...I don't know if the nightlights help her, but it makes me feel better.)

To many stepped on fresh hairballs and almost having necks broken tripping down the steps because of a kitty weaving in out of ankles.
Plus we have four little kids.

I have a nightlight upstairs and one downstairs. Mostly I do it so we don't step on any cats when we get up. We get some light from the streetlight in front of the house, so it's not totally dark anyway, but our bedroom is on the other side of the house, and they like to hang out in there at night. The nightlight in the hallway is just enough to be able to see without keeping us (me) awake.

I have a night light in the kitchen where their food and water fountain are and one in the litter box closet.

The closet, even with a hole in the door for access, is almost totally dark and cats *cannot* see in total darkness.

The one in the kitchen probably isn't necessary but I don't know exactly where the line is between enough light for them and not enough and I want them to be able to easily see their water fountain.

We have nightlights in almost every room - for us, not the cats. They are not bothered about it one way or the other. They know when feeding time is in the morning. If we sleep in late on weekends, they let us know after an hour or so past the time to eat normally.....

I don't have any nightlights, but I suppose it depends where you live. If there are street lights outside it won't be pitch black indoors unless you have black out blinds so they'll be fine. Cats can't see in total darkness but they can see very well in low light.

I agree with most of these posts. Nightlights are great to keep you from stepping on your pets. Also some kitties need them more than others to find the litter box at night. I had a foster kitty who was missing the box until I put a night light near it .

When we moved into our new house, I put in two night lights more for me then the cats, but I find they tend to move around more now since I put them in. When we had our old house it'd be dark more then light but we always had the fish tanks to light their ways, so I wasn't concerned when we were working alot. (Plus it was a small one story house and lights keep me awake so I couldn't put them in, in that house anyway.) Now the added light after the tanks go out, just seems to make then more relaxed. One of them is blue and the other one is white, since our house is bigger, it doesn't bother me to have them on. I hate lights in our bedroom or anywhere I can see it. Can't sleep if that happens.

The relatively new LED nightlights are fantastic. I mean they are going to last for years and years and you can buy them for something like 3/$5.00

LED lighting is the wave of the future for all indoor lighting...

Thanks for everyone's reply...still debating on if we need the nightlights or not but will pick some up today. Hopefully, they will give George a little more light but not so much that his "people" can't fall asleep.