Ok, moving to a farm just to get some outside cats might be slightly overdoing it but there's loads more reasons why you want to live on a farm, preferably somewhere out in the woods so you might as well enjoy the cats which come with the territory.
That's good reason to own a dog. ;-)
Most obvious solution otherwise is to have a fence if you don't have one already.
The best litter box is the Tidy Cats Breeze (if your cat accepts it)
Bad smells (usually) (mostly) come from urine mixing with feces.. this litter box separates urine from feces, and the pellets and pads are engineered to control odors. Plus, the pellets are easier to cleanup than other boxes..
If you use that litter box, and feed your cat foods that it digests well - which in general usually means feeding your cat healthy food.. then cleanup is going to be very easy and painless.
I can confirm this as well. For one, it doesn't even work that well. You're still doing a lot of manual scraping and cleanup too. The thing also just scares the cat. And if you know anything about cats, they're very particular about their litter box, especially about privacy and a sense of "safety". A motor and loud sounds coming from their litter box at various times throughout the day is not generally something they will feel comfortable with and it's possible that they just won't even use it at all.
We didn't pay $700 for it, though. They had a sale a while ago on the previous model, and it was less than half that price.
But no, lets have a knee-jerk reaction to anyone who has an outside cat, without understanding any of the context.
Besides, many people put bells on their cats, and then they're unlikely to catch anything at all in the wilderness.
I apologize. I was thinking of all of the empirical data that shows how cats are able to cause so much harm to the ecosystems they roam.
I love my cats. I’d never let them outside just out of respect for my neighbors and the fauna.
Personally, I love my cats so I let them roam outside instead of keeping them inside like a prison. Then I also care about other animals so naturally they have a bell so they cannot (successfully) hunt other animals. But again, pragmatic approaches aren't for everyone, some people love books and/or data instead :)
I often let my dog off-leash. Weighing the risks & rewards, I pragmatically choose to break the law, knowing full well that I'm in the wrong, not some special case. I eat the tickets and social scorn without complaint. My dog has pretty good recall and is super gentle (esp w/ kids). But the big bad govt (and other parents) didn't write the laws with my special pooch in mind.
You're confident your cat doesn't harm birds. Terrific. It's still wrong, in the general case. So take your lumps.
A (huge) point in your favor is that 2/3rd of (domesticated) cats are feral. So keeping cats indoors in order to better protect birds seems quixotic.
In these parts, owners keep their cats indoors to protect them. Recently, my SO's cat escaped her "catio" and was swiftly caught by a coyote. (A neighbor saw it happen. Horrifying.) Maybe your locale doesn't have coyotes.
Edit: Another exception (that I can think of) is farm/barn cats. Pretty much a necessity. Alas, coyotes. And probably hawks.