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Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. I'd make a guess. In a cat friendly city like Istanbul you'd see cats freely and safely venturing everywhere. Rats would have no chances say in a cafe where a couple cats are sunbathing. Where is in cat unfriendly cities like a typical American city the cats aren't present on the streets, probably because this is where they get caught by Animal Control, etc., and they are more confined to some back alleys, empty lots, etc. And the rats problem for example in NYC is a street problem, i.e. where the trash is. And for example here in Bay Area the several colonies of feral cats that i know about aren't in populated areas where they could have been impactful upon street rat/mice population, instead these colonies are pushed out onto the edges of wildlife areas (where they still do useful things like protecting the birds nests/eggs from rats, etc., yet it woudln't really affect rats in the populated areas)

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I think it’s more like NYC rats are bigger than cats. Istanbul maybe the heat keeps them slim.

Istanbul isn't too hot. I think it has more to do with the fact all the buildings in Istanbul are made of concrete.

The city is like a giant concrete pool. No rotting wood buildings for rats to move within the walls of.

>I think it’s more like NYC rats are bigger than cats.

C'mon, man, its a myth. NYC rats are max 2lb. Even the giant rats - those mine sniffing ones in Africa - are 3.3 lb max. A cat is 10lb+ of pure predator muscle and instinct. A rat has no chance against typical street cat (one can see that even from the reaction time perspective - cats with their 20-70ms are among the fastest mammals while rats have only 150ms+. Just watch Youtube cats vs. snakes).

I don't know about Istanbul but the problem is more like, cats are actively controlled in the U.S. in terms of animal control, spaying, neutering, etc. You don't really have a proper predator-prey dynamic play out with the population because the predators are more contained than the prey are.

I've seen cats in India choose to hunt only mice shorter than their heads and take their time for the mice to give up all their fight. Cats are risk averse.

I have a tiny skinny female 3.5 kg cat who regularly brings home rats that look half her size, my other fat male cat 7.5kg never catches anything nor does my huge 54kg Doberman.

Yeah there’s no way that would happen in the west. In Canada you often hear stories of cats on the edge of properties or just sitting in a field and some lady driving by will stop, pick it up and drop it off at the shelter (which in some cases will only hold them for a few days before giving them away). There’s a huge well organized group of people keeping every animal not fully controlled in check and not keeping them indoors is frowned upon. It’s mostly cultural not just animal control regulation, like most enforcement of municipal rules.

> There’s a huge well organized group of people keeping every animal not fully controlled in check and not keeping them indoors is frowned upon.

Why does this work for cats but not for rats?

There's no old ladies willing to pick up rats in their car, and no rat shelters to take them to if there were.

I have friends in the countryside in North America, and I can corroborate that: as development has encroached, the new subdivisions have filled with former city-dwellers.

Three times in a single month, do-gooder passers-by trespassed past a prominent fence to nab my friends’ dog, who would snooze innocently in the front pasture in the afternoon, and “rescue” him to the county lockup.

The animal control people know him by name now, but they can’t do much to waive the mandatory “re-adoption fee”…

Wait so random people steal this person’s property, hand off to some (presumably) public agency, and the agency is charging a fee to have said property released? Sometimes it seems the US is a strange place. (Maybe the dog is missing dog tags?)

That’s correct! Nothing punitive, just “admin fees,” I guess to cover the cost of a kennel for the afternoon and of reading his microchip to confirm his vaccination status. They’re really big on “user fees” around there—they even charge prisoners a nightly fee for “using” the cells they were imprisoned in [0]

I’d venture that there’s grey area there that’s relevant here: to you and me, the animal probably registers as “property,” where to the people doing the “rescuing” it must look more like a precious innocent soul cast out into the cruel harsh world (like the kids they repossess as “neglected” for walking around their block untethered to a parent or nanny [1]). I figure too many superhero movies and crime shows, and not enough exposure to the natural world.

The dog did have collar and name tag; his tags have since been expanded and clarified, and large signs erected at the edge of the property with a photo of the dog and “I LIVE HERE”… so far much better results. And yet.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2022/03/04/1084452251/the-vast-majority-...

[1] e.g. https://reason.com/2024/11/11/mom-jailed-for-letting-10-year... and https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/free-range-parents-found-re...

Nobody is “picking up” a feral cat unless they like bites and deep scratches. If you can approach and pick up a cat, it’s a pet. Leave it be and it will go home when it wants to.

I've seen citizens trap racoons and release them further from their property. My mom got an annoying feral cat in her car and also dropped it off many km away and it showed up again a week later.

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