Keeping pet cats indoors would save millions of native animals and billions of dollars. So what's stopping us?
Keeping pet cats indoors would save millions of native animals and billions of dollars. So what's stopping us?
Broader adoption of keeping cats safe at home would have large benefits for cat welfare, human health, local wildlife and even the economy. So, should cat owners be required to keep their pets contained to their property?
Broader adoption of keeping cats safe at home would have large benefits for cat welfare, human health, local wildlife and even the economy. So, should cat owners be required to keep their pets contained to their property?
The answer to the question is obviously "yes".
Selfishness
The factual answer
@trk @TassieTosser Knox City Council in outer-eastern Melbourne did exactly this: https://www.knox.vic.gov.au/whats-happening/news/keeping-your-cats-safe-and-secured .
The council did it because some of its suburbs (The Basin, Ferntree Gully, Upper Ferntree Gully, parts of Boronia, Lysterfield) border national parks and the Dandenong Ranges.
Younger cats can adapt to living indoors.
But the challenge was with older cats, who are used to roaming around.
The happy medium would be to phase it in over five to 10 years, where any new cats registered or adopted after a particular date have to stay indoors, but older cats can continue to roam.
Don’t forget laziness.
I swear I am not trying to troll or anything but I don’t understand why the obvious answer is ‘yes’ to the question of ‘So what’s stopping us?’ and I can’t stop laughing.
There's a quote in the body of the post that ends with
So, should cat owners be required to keep their pets contained to their property?
On desktop you get a preview of the article, which I've now included in the heading since I'm guessing it doesn't display on mobile / in apps.
It displays on Boost
Haha, I saw it the same way at first!
Benefits for cats: No FIV infections, no car injuries, safe temperatures, no fights, no parasites.
Benefits for wildlife: no murder, fewer vectors, no loss of habitat to cats
Benefits for community: no roaming cats triggering sensor lights/setting off other pets/damaging property with claws, no toxo transmission, no digging up poo while gardening/losing plants to cat piss
Cons to cats: Keepers must provide entertainment
Cons to keepers: Exercise the level of basic responsibility every other keeper of pets is expected to, or parent with children.
Issue: Controversial??????????
Super controversial. I know plenty of people that are against pets indoors altogether.
Went to a vet specialised in behaviour to help with one of my cats. She insisted that I should let them out.
Try to keep non de-sexed cat indoor. I tried, no way it can work. In the end poor boy lost his balls.
Try to keep non de-sexed cat
I'mma stop you right there. No, don't do that.
Balls vs literally thousands of wildlife. What a hard decision?
Letting a desexed cat roam is literally hatred for this land. Do you want more feral cats? desex pets, it's again basic responsibility.
I think this is the the thread with the highest ratio of downvoted top level comments to upvotes ones I've ever seen on Lemmy
It's always a controversial topic and rarely has any level of insightful or genuine discussion. Best to avoid unless your idea of living is engaging in meaningless social media pile-ons or rage-baiting.
Ah I'm just here for the drama, so it suits me just fine
Jokes aside, it did surprise me a bit. Considering Lemmy tends to be quite left leaning and big into climate activism and stuff of that nature, I really didn't expect there to be this many people who disagree with the OP. I've never really seen more than 1 comment per thread that goes against the common opinion
I didn't realise this was so controversial. All we need now is some hexbear user to stumble across this thread and instigate a mass pile-on (luckily they've decided not to federate with us anymore so we should be safe).
If anyone does notice the conversation get a bit out of hand please report it and we'll deal with it accordingly
Oh, it's only now that you mention it I realise I haven't seen any hexbears in a while.
I'd probably have locked this thread by now if I were a mod tbh. Although I don't really like threads being locked, it doesn't look like there's much actual discussion happening. To me, it looks more like everybody on both sides is screaming their opinions as loud as they possibly can and trying to 1 up the other side
The discussion here has gone a bit off the rails, and it's reached the point where discussion is no longer meaningful. As such I am locking this thread. If you believe you have something meaningful to contribute to the broader discussion create a new post.
In my neighbourhood in the city, there's some people who take their cat out in the park on a leash. I've done it myself. Though I also let one out on his own. He got spooked by a reindeer and then stayed inside for a whole day lol
Mainly they were indoor cats though. I don't think mine killed anything
Walking your cat on a leash is pretty common here. I can't even remember when I last saw a cat just roaming freely.
We need to genetically modify cats to only hunt rats.
The laws of physics.
I've always assumed that a cat would go nuts stuck inside all the time. Maybe I'm wrong but I imagine that most people would view it as cruel.
Cats go nuts at the witching hour anyway, being inside or outside has nothing to do with it.
Basically, nah, they're alright inside. They sleep for between 12 to 18 hours a day and get most active at dawn and dusk, so having some way for them to burn off energy with a good cat tree or the like will keep them occupied. And if they want more than that, they will come to you and make their demands known. And if that's still not enough and you're willing to put the effort in and do some acclimatising, you could get a second cat and they'll keep each other occupied.
I have two cats, they have never been let outside and they've been completely happy. Granted the house is a decent size and we have a lot of things to keep them entertained, but that responsibility comes with the ownership I figure.
Maybe I'm wrong
You totally are, but at least now you know
They don't if you exercise a modicum of responsibility and actually make the environment one that meets their needs
Well there you have it dumb dumb.
But seriously I thought cats were like tigers or any other big cat and would prefer an open environment rather than a zoo type setting. At least being able to go outside they get both
Cats are to tigers as dogs are too wolves. They all would like to roam around freely. We don't generally want people to let their dogs roam though.
I have a cat and a dog. The dog gets to go out unsupervised for short periods, but he digs so I mostly go outside with him. I take the cat out several times a day and she wishes I'd let her out more. But I don't want her killing stuff so I make sure she has plenty of toys and entertainment inside too.
That's because it is cruel.
Large numbers always seem terrifying, because our human minds are not made for them. The only way to comprehend them is to compare them to other things - in this case all the ways we humans cause damage to the environment directly. Our suburbs are ecological dead zones already. There is just not much space left between asphalt roads, driveways, and neatly trimmed lawn. It's definitely the cat that goes outside for one hour a day who is the problem. Right next to plastic straws.
The real frustrating thing about all this that the companies that exploit our planet to core keep doing their shit (Noooo you cant work from home for your office job, you MUST commute to the city daily, because reasons!) while we fight with our neighbors about things that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Cars definitely kill wildlife too - estimation methodologies vary, but I've seen estimates saying:
- Vehicles directly kill about 10,000,000 native animals across Australia per annum. That's not including habitat loss, and doesn't include insects (birds, reptiles, and mammals only).
- Pet cats kill about 546,000,000 native animals across Australia per annum. I believe that's using a similar definition excluding insects.
- Feral cats kill about 3,000,000,000 native animals across Australia per annum.
Of course, habit destruction and pollution has a huge impact as well.
But roaming pet cats legitimately are a major part of the problem. It is possible to simultaneously replace lawns with tree cover, and reduce the burden of cats. That could also feed into a comprehensive policy of tackling stray and feral cat populations - something which is made harder in suburbs due to roaming pet cats.
As for whether it is cruel: change is a stressor for cats, so a sudden change from outdoor access to indoor-only could increase stress levels, but that is a one-off transition and there could be ways to manage that (for example, by providing a lot of notice of a change and allowing owners to phase out access, or by having a permit system for indoor and outdoor cats, and allowing renewal of existing permits for specific microchipped cats, but no new outdoor cat permits). Outdoor access / hunting outdoors is a form of enrichment for cats, but not the only one possible. Indoor cats can play with toys, and have owners simulate chasing and hunting activities indoors (for example, with ribbons, small balls, chasing cat treats, and so on) to provide similar enrichment. At the same time, the indoors protect cats from stressful situations like encountering or being mauled by dogs, aggressive cats, foxes, brushtail possums, injuries on the roads, and disease.
That its only a symptom of the real problem and won't actually solve anything.
The animals they catch are weakened from pesticides.
The animals they catch are weakened from pesticides.
Citation needed
Https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8640698/
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We didn't know or study the effects of pesticides in various wild birds. And it varies wildly between species, with chickens not being a good general case. Also that birds are considerably more affected by pesticides than mammals.
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Simple logic. Housecats do not have access to deep woods or exist in large populations outside of cities and suburbs in North America, yet the populations are declining there. This implies that they are not the cause of the decline.
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This logic is backed up by https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back#:~:text=All told%2C the North American bird population is,declined by 53%25%2C or another 720 million birds.
LWhich points out that it is a multitude of factors and that grassland species(i.e. farmland) are the most affected, with wetland and forest species being less affected.
- Further logic is that the decline is a relatively new phenomenon. But housecats killing birds is not new. Therefore something else is behind the decline, and simply keeping cats inside will not fix the issue.
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The Stephens Island Wren says go fuck yourself.
Or they would if they weren't wiped out by a single cat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyall's_wren
Wrong. Feral cats, plural, leftover from the construction workers that built the lighthouse and facilities on the island, are blamed for the extinction.
Billions of bird die each year because of windows, go fight that battle instead. ;)
Yeah cool, here's one good thing we can do to make a positive change but fuck doing it because of the other, completely unrelated thing, right?
It's why I use Linux…