Remember kids, keep your cats indoors. Unless you live on a farm, outdoor cats are either dead cats, or pests.
Oh I got into a “discussion” with my neighbour who’s friend said she was cruel for having indoor cats.
I said her friend is thick and should be ignored, because she is and she should be.
Well the neighbour decided instead to give her cats to the Shelter and now has indoor dogs.
I don’t like my neighbour, she’s stupid with stupid friends, and cruel to animals.
In other news, one of my indoor cats is 19 years old.
It depends on where you live. If you live in a city without predators, then letting your cat go outside in the backyard gives them a very exciting experience. If you live somewhere with coyotes, then your cat is going to die.
Outdoor cats have a shorter average life span in cities, too. One big cause is cars. Also, it’s worth noting that house cats are essentially an invasive species and do a lot of damage to bird populations.
It’s pretty widely recommended to keep cats indoors.
Dogs have to be put on a leash when their outside, outdoor city cats should be too. Stops them from running away, and killing birds.
If your dog or cat runs away then you weren’t meeting their needs.
Or they are dumb and ran away on a whim. Animals aren’t always rational.
It probably does happen occasionally on accident, like hunting dogs that pick up an interesting scent and then get lost, but I’ve never met a good pet owner who’s pet ran away. It’s always the guy who locked his dog in the backyard 16 hours a day and never thought of them as family, or the cat owner who put the car on a starvation diet hoping it would catch mice.
Or they’re an animal that doesn’t have an adult rational brain?
The leading cause of death of all birds and mammals in North America is the domestic cat. That’s not okay.
The alternative would be to not get a cat at all, unless it can go outside without being in danger or causing damage to the ecosystem.
Or, leash train it and provide appropriate supervised enrichment for the cat instead of letting it run loose, just like dog owners are expected to do with dogs. Cats don’t need to roam outdoors unsupervised any more than dogs do.
There are so many cats that would require euthanizing them. They can’t be released. At least an indoor cat you give them a nice life.
My cat just sits in my backyard all day
That’s good, in that sense your yard is essentially acting as an enclosure. Unfortunately most cats don’t only stay in the back yard, and in those cases the owner should either cat-proof their yard to keep the cat inside it, or keep their cat inside their home unless walking them on a leash.
If you’re in an environment where cats are not natural and are invasive, don’t buy cats. Keeping them indoors isn’t a solution. It’s cruel for the cat unless you have an environment specifically set up to house them. All these problems come from people having cats in places they aren’t native and shouldn’t be to begin with.
Name one place where cats wouldn’t be invasive lol
Türkiye.
Africa where they come from
Yeah, okay. So much less cruel to just trap and kill them all. Unless you’ve got a secret cat utopia where they can all go to.
The problem is there already. People adopting and keeping them indoors is not the problem.
A real solution would be better laws and enforcement involving cat breeders and people who let cats roam and reproduce freely. Or all the assholes around the time COVID lockdowns who figured they could just adopt temporarily and then abandon their pets.
Yeah, okay. So much less cruel to just trap and kill them all. Unless you’ve got a secret cat utopia where they can all go to.
Actually yeah that might be needed in some ecosystems. Having cats indoors doesn’t guarantee they won’t escape unfortunately. It should probably be illegal to buy and breed cats in many places around the world. Laws requiring they all be neutered would also help. I know Spain spays and kills feral cats regularly.
We need to find better, more sustainable, more local animals to replace them with.
As someone living in the Netherlands, I look forward to my pet… err… pigeon?
Ok but wait that might be kinda cool
That is a thing though.
Humans disgust me
If you’re in an environment where cats are not natural and are invasive
There’s no such thing. Cats are a domesticated species, they aren’t native to anywhere. Their ancestors were possibly native to the fertile crescent in Syria and to ancient Egypt (among a handful of other places they’re believed to possibly have originated from, it’s hard to pin down), but even if only people in those places ever owned cats, if they let them outdoors all the time it would still be bad for the environment and cause issues. So instead of expecting something completely unreasonable, like the rest of the world no longer keeping cats as pets, let’s stuck with something reasonable, like not letting cats roam freely outdoors.
Keeping cats indoors isn’t any more cruel than keeping dogs indoors. You can leash train a cat, or let them out in a cat-proofed back yard, just like we can with dogs. Cat territory size is dependent on availability of resources, they don’t have an innate need to wander large distances as a species. Some individuals might have some wander lust sure, but that’s what leash training is for. Take them on hikes, you don’t have to put them outside unsupervised with the racoons and coyotes and cars and vulnerable bird species.
Outdoor cats have half the lifespan of indoor cats for a reason. The dead cats I regularly see on the side of the highway on my way home from work certainly aren’t happier than my neighbour’s cat is walking around on a leash alive and healthy. If you learn how to provide proper exercise and enrichment for your cat either indoors or under supervision/on a leash then you don’t need to let them outside unsupervised. If you want your cat to be both happy and safe, then there are plenty of options that are better for both your cat and the local ecosystem. This is something we naturally expect of dog owners, there’s no reason why we can’t do the same with cats.
Eh even on farms they’re not the most effective
Sure cats sometimes catch mice, but you know what else also catches mice and is actually native to wherever your area is? Owls.. Owls that are being chased off by said cat.
Let your local raptors do their job people.
I think it depends on where you live. Where I live there’s not as many owls because everything is just grassland/prairie, so lots of farms still have farm cats for pest control, but I do think it’s ideal to go without if you can.
I’m in the ‘Twitter posts aren’t memes’ side on this. Not even feeling slightly baited by the rage.
I mean, this became a pretty prominent template so I don’t know how much you can really say it’s not a meme, unless you don’t regard words in general as capable of being memes.
I think it’s a meme, but the proliferation of this exact format is why they created c/microblogmemes. Otherwise meme communities become like 70% screenshots of text.
a meme is anything i find funny
my cat is a meme
who needs replication and proliferation of a specific idea
I literally noted that this became a meme template
Are copypastas not memes? Is a meme when reaction image, and the more image it is, the more memier it is?
Outdoor cats should be illegal
How bad it is depends on where you live, but yeah, for a lot of reasons most of the world probably shouldn’t have outdoor housecats. As the article you linked pointed out though, most of the damage is being done by feral cats, and well… that cat’s out of the bag, so to speak.
Feral cat populations are created and maintained by outdoor non-feral cats. Lots of people who don’t keep their cats indoors also don’t get their cats fixed either.
This doesn’t work as a general argument against having an outdoor cat, because you can just have them fixed.
Many people don’t have them fixed unfortunately.
Created yes. Maintained not so much. Feral cats can make more feral cats on their own just fine. In fact, outdoor housecats are really bad for feral cats, because they hunt prey, fight for territory, and contribute to overpopulation of small predators without having to deal with the constant dangers that an actual feral cat does.
then we should set out a bunch of coyotes,
to keep the feral cat population in check.what could possibly go wrong?
Sure, we could try it in Australia first. They love that kind of thing. It always goes great for them.
Nah the coyotes would just all get eaten by the spiders
“So, we set coyotes loose to catch the cats. Then what? We get a wolf to eat the coyotes? Then we get a tiger to eat the wolf!? WHAT EATS THE TIGER, DAD - TELL ME THAT!”
I like the way you think
let’s arrest cats living as cats!
Or, or, or – instead of doing that fucking absurd thing you suggested to try to ignore the valid points other people are making, we deal with them the same way we deal with other ecologically disastrous invasive species.
Are we really getting the indoor cat brigade on lemmy too? Yes, in the US outdoor cats are a danger to local wildlife. Stop pushing this on people who this does not apply to. Outdoor cats are fine in many other parts of the world. The USA isn’t the whole world.
This was my family when I was a kid. We never had a cat for more than 2-5 years because there were coyotes and pumas out there. Except for one cat who lived to old age. I think we had a dozen cats during my childhood. I remember thinking they were happier with their freedom, even though it meant their lives were short.
I know better now. I still think cats are happier when they can go outside, but it’s not worth the risk to their lives and also the lives of the local smaller wildlife.I remember thinking they were happier with their freedom, even though it meant their lives were short.
I know better now.You can be trapped in the most luxurious palace, with your every want attended to, but you cannot leave.
Or, you can be free to go where you please, still have your wants attended to, but there is a chance you will die young and the last hour of your life will be spent in terror and excruciating pain.
Which do you choose?
Honestly a bit of a tough question. I’m not sure, myself.
Interesting concept but cats don’t have the sapience to understand the risk involved with being outside. You could say the same thing about children, but because adults know better we don’t let them do whatever they please.
Mine started life as an indoor cat, but after we put in a dog door for the pups there was no chance. She figured it out by watching them and lets herself out for the occasional prowl (around 4-6 hours a day, she usually goes no farther than the neighbors yard). She doesn’t stay out overnight though, she’d rather sleep inside with her dog.
Honestly that’s really shitty dude. You should figure out how to keep the cat indoors
They make dog doors that only open if the animal has a fob on their collar. Would let the dogs out but keep the cat in.
I think the risk can be weighed and mitigated. Coyotes mainly come out at night, and you can keep a cat indoors at night. If every new cat gets promptly snapped up anyway, maybe it’s just not a safe enough area.
Honest question, how do you keep a cat indoors at night? We used to call them, but sometimes they wouldn’t show up. That meant you might see them the next day, or never again. One little poofy grey cat we had disappeared for a week before turning up soaking wet and meowing frantically. Cats are quick and can make pretty good distance from your house, so when you’re calling them in for the night, they could be literally anywhere. They also like to hunt at sunset, so might just ignore you on purpose.
That’s my experience anyways. I think some of the other comments here are right, that a limited outdoor space that they could enjoy but not escape from would be ideal. I don’t have a yard so my cats are indoor only. I did try to leash-train the smarter one but she was not having it.
edit: we would clang their food dishes and shake the food bags. Calling them in for the night was also feeding time. My experience was that despite this they wouldn’t show up sometimes.You feed them at the same time every day before sunset, and then don’t let them out after that. Most cats will not want to miss dinner.
Only a cat goes missing for a week then shows up soaking wet and meowing frantically.
You just close the doors and windows after they come in for dinner, before they eat their dinner.
What the fuck is wrong with people
It breaks my heart with how many irresponsible pet owners there are. There’s no good reason to let your cat outside. People who can’t accept that shouldn’t have cats.
Not all places in the world have coyotes. Some places are safe for cats. I don’t have cats, but there are several out-doors cats where I live that seems to be doing just fine.
Until they get hit by a car. Or wander into the wrong yard and get killed by a dog. I see more dead cats on the side of the freeway/highway than any other animal by far.
Just make the coyote to be your pet at this point
I just lost my very beloved barn cat to a suspected coyote attack.
It really sucks. He was a feral cat not deemed suitable for a home and he went from hissing at me for weeks to a total cuddly love…with a wild wall climbing streak.
He knew love, friendship, a warm bed and a full belly but the guilt I have is all consuming. He lived a great life but man…my barn feels very sad and quiet these days.
It really sounds like you gave him a great life that nobody else would have. Without you they would have died a feral cat only knowing struggle within the unending fight for food and warmth. With you they got to know love and got to leave all that struggle behind. You did good.
- shiveyarbles ( @shiveyarbles@beehaw.org ) 13•11 months ago
Coyotes love him, kids despise him