Is it okay to put cats in a cage during the afternoon/morning and let them out for the rest of the whole night?

For some background, my family have a pet dog and we don't have much experience in taking care of cats.

A few months ago, two strays cats wandered into our frontyard and showed no signs of leaving. Most of the time they just sleep during the afternoons and at night they are active.

Just to be safe, we took both of them to the vet and got them all the neccessary vaccines. For a stray cat, they are pretty chill with us, so we let them say in our frontyard and gave them catfood. I guess I can say that they think of our place as also their home.

Fast forward to last week, the cats rarely leave too far from our home. They don't cause much trouble though; they just sleep during the day and run around the frontyard during the night. It's a pretty fun experience having cats around.

Still, there is a problem. Our dog regularly comes outside during the afternoon to do his daily bathroom routine. We have to wake the cats up and shoo them away or else they might get into a fight. Even so, they just come back when our dog finally goes back inside.

A few days ago we bought a large cage and a litterbox for them to stay in. The idea is that we put them inside the cage for the day so that when our dog goes outside, the cats are safe inside the cage.

The question is, is this okay? We keep them inside a cage for the day so that they can sleep without being troubled by our dog. We also did it so we don't have to keep shooing the cats away everytime our dog wants to come outside. We let them out during the whole night and that's when they are most active, playing and running around. Won't they develop behavioral problems if they are in a cage the whole day?

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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/kpzzz0/is_it_okay_to_put_cats_in_a_cage_during_the/