Keep them indoors.
All animals should be free, if you can't provide freedom to your animals then you should not have any.
What about the fact that animals introduced to an environment by humans in the name of "freedom" cause disproportionate harm to other animals? Whose freedom wins?
I'm sure it seems easy to you to not have animal companions, but plenty of rational people place a lot more value on it than you do.
Your point of view is based on faulty assumptions about the importance of that experience.
It's the same as cigarets, you know it's toxic to you and others but still you want it regardless.
PS: I love cats and always had one until few years back but I don't want to have one to force him to stay indoor, as long as I don't have a place for it to go out I won't get any.
Again, keep your cat indoors. Otherwise, you're part of the problem.
By and large, domestic US outdoor cats are not in fragile ecosystems, but they are the number one killer of birds. They roam outside along with other species (like squirrels and crows) that have had to adapt to the insane environment humans have developed.
I've always seen my pets as persons, with feeling and moods. Trapping them inside is cruel. Cats in nature are adapted to roam and explore.
My cat in the US regretably, has brought home a few birds, but all of the birds were species of least concern. Fortunately, there are a lot of cheap collars owners can use to help alert the bird of the cat's presence before predation occurs.
I recently took a course on ornithology and was stunned by how difficult a bird's life is from the migrations, predations, building collisions, and the sheer amount of work they invest in nesting and raising their young. It's easy to take them for granted until you actually understand what they go through just to exist, unlike a pampered cat who gets to kill for sport.
Cat owners who allow their cats outdoors are being cruel to birds and small animals, period. A bell on your cat's collar doesn't make much difference. There's no way to wiggle out of this moral dilemma. If you love nature and want it balanced and protected, then keep your cat indoors. Or, if you can, train your cat to kill only invasive species.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/2020/09/the-232... https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/
Of course they don't know which is of least concern, but by and large I do see everything they kill because they bring it home and I have to clean it up. It is in their nature to bring it home.
> A bell on your cat's collar doesn't make much difference.
Bells and other deterrents absolutely do make a difference (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2022.85044...)
There's barely any species of concern in urban environments anymore, because:
* Industrial run-off * Habitat destruction * Roads and highways with vehicles * Air pollution * Light pollution * Poisons * Electrocution from power lines * Buildings with glass (actual a #2 killer of birds!) * Hunting (both legal and illegal)
Domestic cats are merely a cherry on top of the myriad of environmental mistakes humans have made in the name of progress.
They are simply acting on instinct and trying to be happy in a world of human creation.
If you truly care about birds I would urge you to:
* stop driving * use no lights past dusk * not use or consume any product that contributes to air pollution * not use any power grid that uses power lines * not use any building with glass * not consume any poultry
So while you pet and play with Fluffy that evening, the mother bird she maimed earlier that day can no longer make ~100 trips a day to feed its hatchings. She tries, but can only manage a dozen or so trips. They slowly starve over the next few days despite the mother's desperate attempts.
That bird survived all the other leading causes of bird mortality, but not Fluffy. And Fluffy gets a few more bonus kills when the hatchlings expire.
I'm curious what would you do if people had a new breed of small domesticated dog that is efficient at killing outdoor cats, and those people let that dog roam like a cat?
Given that your cat is out there doing his thing, this new breed of outdoor dog is also out there doing his thing. As you said, they are simply acting on instinct and trying to be happy in a world of human creation.
His owners think he's a person. It would be cruel to lock him up all day.
But one of these dogs swiftly kills your outdoor cat. And your next cat. In fact, they're becoming the leading cause of death among outdoor cats, seconded only by cars.
Would you a) demand that dog breed not be allowed to roam because it harms cats, b) keep your next cat indoors, or c) ?
2. if your cat wants to go outdoors, you can leash them like any dog-owner is required to do. the whole "cats need to be in nature" argument is rooted in the assumption that you as the owner aren't involved in that nourishment. if you can't be a responsible cat owner (keeping it from roaming on it's own; keeping it stimulated) then don't get a pet. is the cat really a critical unit of your family if you skirt responsibility and are okay w/ it dying violently outside?
3. the US is very much a fragile ecosystem. source on it not being? we, like many other place, have had a huge and trending decline in biodiversity.
4. cats haven't adapted to the human environment; we've developed technology and laws that have protected cats in our human environment. i'm not sure how they've had to adapt as they can interact with humans safely.
5. you don't see everything your cat kills. you may be able to placate yourself that your cat isn't one of the "rampant killers", but that thought isn't based solely on fact.
Would you want to live in a cage your whole life? Then why do you want to do it to others? Never heard of the Golden Rule: "Don't do to others what you wouldn't want them to do to you"?
I understand your point of view, I share it, cats are deadly to many smaller species that's why if you're against that then you shouldn't get a cat at all.
PS: Australia's problem is about the Feral cats and they are making traps in the wild to poison their skin thanks to some box trap and AI.
And if you are living in a shoebox yourself, where you regard your own home as a "prison" or a "cage", then you have no business keeping such a pet anyway.
> PS: Australia's problem is about the Feral cats and they are making traps in the wild to poison their skin thanks to some box trap and AI.
Feral AND domestic. There are laws introduced in Australia that mandates cats to be kept indoors for this reason.
> Feral AND domestic. There are laws introduced in Australia that mandates cats to be kept indoors for this reason. I didn't know about the domestic one.
Many people who have cats do so by adoption of strays found in their area so not getting a cat is the same as letting a cat roam free in that area without a safe space and consistent food source.
The whole "prisoner" argument seems so dumb to me when we've already decided as a society that it's in the best interests of society to neuter/spay as many cats and dogs as possible to prevent an explosion in the stray population. Do you think we shouldn't do that because you wouldn't neuter/spay yourself?
We can have both desexing pets and letting them roam free. No need to force them to live inside.
How free are they if you consider them yours?
That said, this product looks like it can help people who lose their indoor cats, which happens. I recently helped rescue a neighbors cat who snuck out and stayed outside for 2 full months.
Over time you can get rid of the leash and just walk side by side.
My cat was 10 when we moved to a ground floor apartment, so we couldn't realistically prevent him from escaping, so we started walking him. He lived over 16 years, the last two of which he would only go outside to lay in the bushes.
Deer, possums, raccoons, and other wildlife who live outdoors seem incapable of learning how to avoid it, so it's unclear my cat will either.
Further as mentioned in my post, my parents essentially ran your experiment already with the result being every male cat we had dying in under 5 years due to being hit by cars.
So no, I don't think it's a great idea to let your cat outdoors in most reasonably populated & dense areas of the US.
Or, you only notice the ones which have been killed. Otherwise, deer, possum and raccoon populations should decrease pretty fast. And of feral cats of course.
> Further as mentioned in my post, my parents essentially ran your experiment already with the result being every male cat we had dying in under 5 years due to being hit by cars.
I'm sorry to hear that, but I am curious why it was only the male cats. Perhaps they are less skittish? What happened to the female cats?
> So no, I don't think it's a great idea to let your cat outdoors in most reasonably populated & dense areas of the US.
Alright, but I would hope you can at least agree that keeping cats indoors all the time is not preparing them for the outdoors, in the cases when they do slip out.
Your very post (and Wikipedia link) undermines the argument you are tying to make.
You are letting your very obvious personal bias determine your interpretation of what is an objective fact.
[1] https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/native-fauna#:~:text=N....
So the discussion to have here is 'do we accept having domesticated animals in environments they didn't originate from'.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/domestica...
... so they are domesticated and not native... ???
By definition, domestic animals and plants have no native home except with humans. This is why we call domestic cats who escape and live in the wild "feral," not "wild," because a feral animal is specifically a domestic animal not living with humans, not a non-domestic native animal. It does not matter whether they 'domesticated themselves' or not, they are a domestic species and therefore not equatable with a wild one.
As a result, your point simply makes no sense. Domestic cats have no 'native lands' because they are not and cannot be 'native' anywhere except in human settlements.
https://www.science.org/content/article/genes-turned-wildcat...
http://www.jabg.org/view/JABG_202303_02.pdf
from the looks of it, you found an inkling of confirmation and rolled with it. you think you got a science backing for your ideas, but nah, wrong. remind yourself when you read all the articles claiming "near identical DNA!" that human DNA is ~1.6% different from gorilla DNA. geneticists are seeing larger differences between domestic and wild cat species.
> Can you point out the part of the article that disagrees with the assertion "cats are domestic animals"?
This is neither relevant nor the issue being discussed. It is a straw man, and you all too well know this. No one has at any point claimed that there are not domestic cats.
The entire point made was that cats are a native species in many parts of Europe, and that research shows not only that cats domesticated themselves, but that domestic and wild cats are genetically almost identical. The fact that domestic cats exist does not prevent native wild cats from also existing.
No, but there is traffic and plenty of people who take objection to cats fouling their gardens and will happily leave out a saucer of antifreeze.
If you live in an urban area, the kindest thing to do is keep you cat indoors.
Source: I’ve had both indoor and outdoor cats, including cats that transitioned to outdoor after being raised indoor. Lost one outdoor cat tragically in middle of his lifespan. But his equally-outdoor brother lived to 19, and all the outdoor cats hands down seemed happier on average (less lethargic, less neurotic, less obsessive, less overeating).
One source suggests anywhere from 2x to 10x increase in life expectancy.
In a lot of ways cat's are still in the early phases of domestication and the concept of keeping them indoors only is rather new.