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Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

The ideal number of cats per home in New Zealand is zero. Cats prey on local wildlife, much of which is near extinction as it is because of introduced predators including humans. Those who advocate for banning cats in New Zealand have a pretty strong case.

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Is there an argument against indoor cats? That is now the recommendation in the US, as far as I know.

Loose an outdoor cat in a horrible, easily preventable way, and you'll quickly become an indoor-only cat owner.

Umwhat? If your cat is running away when you set it loose, you're not doing it right.

I suspect OP misspelled 'lose'.

My wife's first cat died trying to beat a car across the road in front of their house.

Outdoor cats meet similar fates regularly.

Yes, I mean "lose", typeo.

Raccoons, coyotes, dogs, mean kids, cars, etc. There are many ways for an outdoor cat to meet a premature death - usually in gruesome ways.

It's simply not safe to let cats roam outdoors anymore - particularly in urban neighborhoods.

I live in NZ and my partner has an indoor-only cat. It's considered a bit weird here, we've had friends politely suggest that keeping a cat indoors is cruel. In principle indoor cats are just as good for bird life as no cats, but either is a tough sell.

Considering longer lifespan, better health, and seemingly equivalent happiness, it's arguable that not keeping a cat indoors is cruel.

Just like how it's arguably cruel to not move all wildlife into zoos and cages.

Assuming we're agreeing to use QALYs, I think that's unlikely, but don't let my skepticism stop you from arguing it. :)

we've had friends politely suggest that keeping a cat indoors is cruel

Lord, no wonder there's a bird mortality problem.

Is there evidence that cats are actually a problem for local wildlife in NZ? Which species are under threat?

I've found this belief is common, and it may well be true in some places (including NZ), but it's not true in many, too. In the UK for example there's no evidence to suggest cats are a problem for bird populations[1]. There is a lot of wild extrapolation going on with this subject.

Often I see people quoting statistics such as an absolute number of bird deaths caused by cats, not really understanding that you can't tell from just that statistic whether or not the species are under threat.

[1] https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/gardening-...

Perhaps you can keep your cat indoors?

Or in an outside enclosure. They're not very hard to install around your fence.

I will say cats are crazy escape artists. We had to confine ours after a move to make sure they didn't make a mess or escape while we reassembled our house but the room didn't have any doors so we piled up boxes and they just got better and better at escaping. This escalated to one of our cats jumping up and slamming a box off the top to make his escape.

I had a couple of cats. I went on holiday, and left them at a cattery for a couple of weeks. The older one managed to open the cat-room door by pushing down on the handle, then ran up and down the long corridor until noticed by the cattery owner. Then the younger cat died, and I got a new younger cat. I went on holiday again, by which time the older cat's back legs were knackered and he couldn't jump up. But I warned the (different) cattery owner that he was an escape artist. This time, he taught the younger cat how to push down on the handle, and again they ended up running up and down the long corridor. Cats are escape artists.

I was rearranging a bedroom once, and flipped the mattress vertically, long-ways, against the wall to make room to move everything else around. Literally as I was lifting the mattress a cat started climbing up it to reach the new, higher vantage point in the room.

And they will save you a fortune on vet bills compared to allowing your cat to roam free outside.

We try and encourage our cat to go outdoors - this, of course, makes him stay indoors.

Any sufficiently popular indoor pet that can survive outdoors will end up with a feral population.

So it's a bit like saying "instead of ROHS can't we just mandate recycling, but if the cheap kids toys people dump indescribably could breed.

I mean, you can very easily keep your cat indoors.

the GP is saying that across a sufficiently large population... you will have cats escaping (some subset of the population), and thus a feral population will eventually form.

It does not necessarily need to be your cat that kicks this off.

One trustworthy indoor cat steward can get away with it; a large enough population will naturally contain some careless people, or even surprises (hit by a bus)

Unless they are fixed.

Charge a high pet licensing fee if they are not.

PAWS in Seattle will give you a cat and it comes for a coupon for a free spay or neuter (often kittens are too young at adoption time). Of course the fee for adoption is higher than the cost of the surgery, so you are paying for it whether you use it or not.

There are often very cheap city/county options too: where I live its less than $30 for a spay/neuter + rabies vacc (significantly less than a private vet would charge).

It's pretty easy, just ensure that all cats sold for anything apart from breeding are desexed, and have significant penalties for allowing unregested animals to breed.

Same problem in Australia.

As a side note, my friend has a cat that had one of its front legs amputated after being attacked by a dog. After that it was much better - couldn't kill as much wildlife, couldn't escape so easily, much better for snuggles.

wouldn't it be more efficient to ban humans?

Not unless you extirpated the cats first.

At which point, why ban the humans?

In the Anthropocene around 90% of all macro-organisms will go extinct. Banning cats does not change this overall figure. Even for New Zealand cats are a lesser problem compared to the rats and possums brought there by humans and those are just a drop in a barrel compared to the overall effect of humanity. For example, New Zealands best solution to the rat and possum problem is bio-chemical warfare¹.

The whole "ban cats" movement is nothing but humanity shifting blame towards one of their oldest allies. New Zealands native birds are not endangered by cats, but because someone removed almost all of their forest homes during the last two centuries².

If you want to prevent the Kōkako and other native birds from going extinct, instead of protesting against other peoples pets, go and fund some breeding program or forest preserve.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080_usage_in_New_Zealand 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_New_Zealand

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