Australian with three cats here - they’re all indoor and happy about it because i’m not a shitarse pet owner. An outdoor cat in Australia is ecological genocide
From the cats perspective I think it’s quite uncontroversial to say they’d be happier roaming free.
EDIT: I’d really love to hear the argument for why a cat actually prefers to live its enitire life indoors, despite this being something we’ve only done to them for the past few decades or so.
Okay, sure, but that doesn’t apply to the vast majority of cats. Your average house cat is much more a wild animal than a dog for example and it’s quite ridiculous to think they’d prefer being indoors.
I could literally leave my back door wide open and Cerys would not step foot out it. She hates the outdoors. Punkin’s stuck his nose out a few times, but it holds no real interest for him and Misha - who was an abandoned cat that literally decided to move in with us and has lived an extensive part of her life as an in-out cat could not give a shit about going outside.
Needs are met - food, safety, security and entertainment - they’re very happy.
But all of that is downright irrelevant. We are talking about an introduced species that wreaks unimaginable ecological damage if left to its own devices. Why the almighty fuck would a cat’s fee-fees override that? Not to mention the cat safety issues. I mean i’m sure punkin would be ‘happier’ with his balls intact merrily raping and impregnating his sister and mother but that shit ain’t happening either.
Domestic cats have been in the UK for ~2000 years, and wildcats for >~8000 years.
Their only real predators in the UK are cars and dogs, and most British bird species are well acquainted with cats, and on the whole aren’t at high risk. Recommendations say an outdoor cat is a healthy, happy cat.
The RSPB (bird conservation charity) doesn’t find them a major problem here, but do recommend:
Neuter them
Keep them in at dawn, dusk & night
If they ever kill a bird, put a bell or beeper on the collar
Which seems a reasonable set of recommendations.
On the other hand, the USA and Australia don’t have the thousands of years of history of cats as part of the ecosystem, and they have all these wild dog-type-things and snappy reptile things etc, so the cats are in more danger, and the native bird species are at higher risk. Recommendations say an outdoor cat is a bird-murdering machine that’s about to get run over by a giant SUV and then eaten by drop-bears.
My Eastern European neighbours think it’s weird that we let the cats inside at all. They think they should live entirely outside.
So I guess “different countries, different rules”.
They’ve definitely got big cats (which seem to be named after Mac OS versions), though I’m not sure if they have smaller wildcats which occupy the same ecological position as domestic cats.
From a UK perspective, it seems unbelievably cruel to keep a cat locked indoors. The hunting instinct is one of a cat’s main drives, so to take that away is equivalent to removing sleep or food. I understand the issues around cats and wildlife in other countries, but I think the solution is to just not have domestic cats rather than trying to imprison them.
I think the solution is to just not have domestic cats rather than trying to imprison them.
I agree, it’s a cruel to keep a cat indoors than to put a goldfish in a very small bowl or feeding an animal vegan food. Unpopular opinion, seeing how fond people are about their furry killers, but it’s the only real way to remedy this problem.
I think it depends where you live. Here in the UK, cats have no predators, and bird populations have survived predation by cats for thousands of years, cats mostly pick off the weakest examples. Maybe there are regions of the us where cats are not problematic as outdoor pets, I don’t know for sure. I’m fond of my “furry killer” too, and occasionally she does take out a bird or small rodent, but I see it as part of the natural order.
This is the key. Just because it works in the UK does not mean it does elsewhere. There are plenty of places where cats are essentially very dangerous invasive species and are wrecking absolute havoc on the wildlife populations. This includes the majority of North America.
I do agree. I mean I came across as pretty anti-cat, but the lady I love (and therefore myself) are servants to one. I do not particularly care either way, but if I had to keep the poor thing indoors all the time I think he would be miserable.
So if one has to make regulations I’d rather vote for banning cats altogether, rather than banishing them to the indoors. It’s a rather strict stance, but you cannot really expect to be able to enforce a curfew (or purrfew, if you will) on cats. It is ridiculous.
They are literally native to Africa and parts of Asia. In most of Europe they have been held for thousands of years and are not a threat to the ecosystems.
Taking Countries with invasive species as a global role model makes no sense.
Are you confusing ‘breeder’ with ‘pet mill’? Ghetto breeding was horrible to my family involved in animal care and salvation. Actual breeders, though, not so much.
I’m talking about anyone who intentionally takes an unneutered male animal and an unspayed female animal and intentionally puts them together to make and sell babies. Especially inbreeders. The only purebred animal that I can accept is sheepdogs, because they aren’t bred for looks, they’re bred for intelligence.
All older breeds were breed for some use at some time.
Greated there are some modern breeds that are done for looks only and now care for the dogs health which I agree is an issue, but preserving historic breeds has merit.
I mean, if such a campaign is ever completely successful, along with one for capturing or fixing stray and feral animals, there would need to be some amount of breeding of them or they’d eventually go extinct. Perhaps with regulation on both practices that lead to unnecessary health problems (like inbreeding or breeding for harmful traits like squashed faces) and on numbers to avoid breeding more of a specific sort of animal than there exists demand for.
Maybe add a safeguard to it, so that when local animal shelters are at 10% capacity the regulation is temporarily lifted or something. Realistically, it would never be totally successful anyway.
Remember folks, adopt, don't shop. Not only is it just significantly more moral, mutts are far less likely to have health issues from inbreeding that will shorten their lives. You get more time with your four legged loved ones
I mean, there’s responsible breading and irresponsible breeding. My mum has always kept setters of both the Irish and English varieties. The breeders she gets them aren’t just pumping endless dogs out for profit, they’re taking good care of the bitches.
We don’t really have “shelters” in the same way as the US in the UK. As far as I know passes like the RSPCA and Battersea Dogs home aren’t at capacity, they don’t publicise that they are. The one thing we do well in the UK is love our pets.
Outdoors is dangerous for cats anyways. There is a reason indoor cats live longer, there are predators and cars outside. Cats can be perfectly happy indoors.
If your cat likes being outside, you can either grab some lumber and chicken wire to make a catio or just get a cat harness and leash. Yeah, there is a chance a cat can escape from the latter if it’s not properly sized and secured, but once in a while an indoor cat getting loose is much better than having many outdoor cats outside most of the time hunting random fauna.
We have someone saying that not letting cats outdoors is fascism and someone else saying that letting them outside is genocide, and neither one is from Hexbear sicko-hexbear
Whichever side you’re on, the important thing is to dig in to the most extreme position possible and denounce everyone else in the strongest possible terms. Bring out the memes buried beneath seven layers of irony and in-jokes and let the world know the truth about how goldfish are colonialist. This is the Hexbear way.
There isn’t really anything here that would prey on a cat. Australia is pretty harmless comparatively. No bears, no ‘big’ cats or wolves of any kind. Crocodiles are limited to the tropics and most of Australia is not in the tropics. Nothing like anacondas and cats are too quick for snakes anyway. There are sharks but they pose no threat to cats. For all the press Australia gets about dangerous wildlife it’s actually a pretty chill place. The cities are pretty devoid of bugs if you live in a flat or keep your garden litter down, even more devoid of bugs since I was a kid (mostly due to massive logging in regional areas and overdevelopment in urban areas).
I would think cars would probably be cats biggest killer, especially in urban areas.
Im so mad with people not willing to put down feral cats, the live of a single cat is worth more than the live of the hundreds of wild animals that it will kill in its lifetime? Fucking not, but some people are delusional and only think in the cute cat pics. They say ignorance is bliss
TNR works absolutely fine at reducing feral cat populations. The issue is not that people are not killing enough cats, it’s that getting a cat spayed or neutered can be expensive and therefore inaccessible to a lot of people, and a lot of dickhead liberals just expect poor people to not have pets if they can’t keep $10,000 USD in the bank at all times to cover emergency vet expenses (legit shit you’ll see bandied around as advice for “responsible” owners). An effective response would be offering free spay, neuter, and chip services for all pets, alongside people keeping their pets indoors, and maybe offering stuff like pine litter for free to address some reasons why people might want their cat to be outside.
You’re an entitled speciist! If cats are good at hunting, it’s just nature’s way of creating balance and it’s none of your goddamn business to prevent that. In my personal opinion people like you (entitled speciist scum) are redundant and we don’t need you on planet Earth.
It is similar to the Dodo bird. Humans(Dutch settlers) brought Dogs and other predators to the island(Mauritius) where Dodo birds lived. Over time, the dogs and humans overhunted the bird to extinction. dogs were good guides and predators, same thing with the cats we brought to Australia. Humanity has done unfixable damage by bringing species that would not know better.
And that also means we caused many species’ to go extinct, and we did!! Mass colonization actually has caused extinctions for tons of species, including the Dodo bird.
It is similar to the Dodo bird. Humans(Dutch settlers) brought Dogs and other predators to the island(Mauritius) where Dodo birds lived. Over time, the dogs and humans overhunted the bird to extinction. dogs were good guides and predators, same thing with the cats we brought to Australia. Humanity has done unfixable damage by bringing species that would not know better.
It is similar to the Dodo bird. Humans(Dutch settlers) brought Dogs and other predators to the island(Mauritius) where Dodo birds lived. Over time, the dogs and humans overhunted the bird to extinction. dogs were good guides and predators, same thing with the cats we brought to Australia. Humanity has done unfixable damage by bringing along species that would not know better.
If you follow the chain… We brought the cats. By saying they did not know better and we do know better, We should have known about how invasive species can dominate ecosystems and wreck everything around them. In fact, In Pennsylvania, they have to kill Spotted Lantern flies(from asian flights) because the spotted lantern flies would eat all the plants that native animals depend on. This is why food is inspected on flights(the risk of foreign diseases/parasites). The native species on their land did not adapt to foreign predators. We did not know better(like the cats) and now we do.
As a cat owner I fully agree with this. Pets should generally be kept in ways that don´t threaten wildlife. However I would also prefer that cats who stray around don´t get killed but instead caught, spayed, sheltered and adopted.
TNR works, as feral cats often cannot be adopted past a certain age, they just won’t let humans near them willingly. But there isn’t a need to kill cats for not wanting to be adopted, they can be fed and over time their population can be dramatically reduced, it just requires actual commitment to the program and free access to spay and neutering services to the public.
Add comment