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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The laws of physics.
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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?
Haha, I saw it the same way at first!
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
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 digging up poop while gardening, 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.
I guess you’re not able to care for cats then?
why is their mood worth more than all the wildlife they kill or terrorise?
I never said I was one of those people. I keep my cats indoors. And their mood is fine. One of them won’t leave even if I leave the door open. Takes a few steps outside and chills there.
well there you go, someone was wrong about what cats need to be happy.
You’d think a vet would be more worried about all the heal problems they pick up outside but I suppose it’s more work for them if mr fluffypaws needs surgery or whatever.
Try to keep non de-sexed cat indoor. I tried, no way it can work. In the end poor boy lost his balls.
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.
Try to keep non de-sexed cat
I’mma stop you right there. No, don’t do that.
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
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
That is definitely a fair call, locking it now.
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
Also I wasn’t going to say this before, but the extremely aggressive and toxic nature of the indoor cat crowd usually doesn’t help sway neutrals to their side, either. Like in this thread you have someone sharing a link to a study and trying to expand on their counterargument and the OP just called them a “selfish piece of shit” and didn’t attempt to engage in a discussion at all. If you think the study is being misrepresented or has flaws, you have the option of explaining that in more detail. Alternatively, if you think the argument is being put forward in bad faith you can just ignore it. Instead people always seem to get mad and start calling each other names, regardless of the social media platform. It feels like a lot of conversations online these days are just one misunderstanding or disagreement away from devolving into full monkey brain tribal warfare.
The internet loves cats. People also only care about the environment for as long as it has nothing to do with their personal life. That’s why everyone gets very upset when it’s suggested that they need to drive less or reduce their meat consumption. I have frequently seen fatalist comments here suggesting we shouldn’t change our lifestyles at all because anthropogenic global warming is primarily being driven by big companies and we are therefore freed of any responsibility as individuals.
People also only care about the environment for as long as it has nothing to do with their personal life
Plane travel i think is Australian’s biggest problem on this. I once had a friend spitting daggers at me for suggesting the amount of waste caused by travelling to a place like Europe every year needs to be stopped (read: trips spaced out further) until we access a different less carbon intensive transport.
I thought the point i’s making was really, really moderate considering the impacts, but my friend turned on me like i’d just insulted their mothers favourite budgie.
It was a surreal moment.
Must be nice to have the means to travel to Europe every year lol
Haha, i might have been embellished that a bit.
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It’s why I use Linux…
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?
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.
That’s a whole heap of words to say “maybe”. On the other side of the world.
If you’re happy being a selfish piece of shit, feel free to leave your cat roam. When Mittens gets hit by a car / contracts feline aids / otherwise meets a premature death, you can rest easy knowing that akshually it was probably pesticides.
Say you didn’t understand what any of those papers said without saying you didn’t understand what those papers said.
I mean, he doesn’t have to say it, your comment and the sources did a good job suggesting you only did a cursory read yourself.
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The first paper states that birds are less sensitive to pyrethroid based pesticides, which makes your broad statements about pesticides sketchy at best.
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Simple logic doesn’t work in science specifically because it’s simple and is subject to internal biases. You can’t make an assumption and appeal to intuitive reasoning without some evidence to draw that link.
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Your second paper doesn’t back up your claim. It states that bird population loss is a multifaceted problem. Yes, pesticide use is called out as a factor, but so too is habitat loss through urbanisation and unregulated harvesting practices, which kind of answers your point 4.
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These are all American sources. As a result, very little of this is applicable to the Australian biosphere beyond the most broad strokes since they dont take into account differences in local food webs, urban planning, environmental legislation etc.
TLDR, someone is using irrelevant sources and their dislike of pesticides to justify keeping their cats outside
No it absolutely doesnt.
It absolutely states that birds are considersbly more at risk, and that we dont know how by how much. Try reading more than the intro next time.
I said that cats arent the problem, they’re a symptom of it. That is a definition of a multifacted problem. That paper absolutely says the same thing.
The reality is that you could keep every housecat inside and it would not stop the decline.
I feel like you’re a top tier anti-vaxxer too.
“There’s a possibility that some other factor may play a part in offsetting one of the negative impacts of free-range cats… therefore, all other positives of containing pets may be completely ignored”
- You, 2024
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Before pesticides cats used to just starve. Everyone knows this.
/s
Equally, before the post-DDT pesticides(when the decline started), housecats didn’t exist, never went outside and never killed anything.
/s
Go look at the other reply where I sourced my opinion.
You don’t think house cats existed before DDT pesticides?
You don’t think house cats, which have existed for 3600 years, existed before 1874?…
Do I need to math that math for you?
thats my point
If house cats were actually some kind of living natural disaster, birds would have driven extinct millenia ago. To solely blame housecats for the mass extinction of songbirds that have existed beside them for hundreds to thousands of years without any appreciable population effect is insane.
Also while DDT has its own host of issues regarding it building up in the food chain, my concern here is the post-DDT ones.
What a genius! You solved it!
Here I was thinking there are billions more humans than at any other time in history, many of whom have pet cats.
The increase in house cat numbers is surely unrelated to the increased predation on native wildlife!
No. I am saying it is not solved and that articles like this are skirting the real problem, which is probably pesticides and herbicides.
The decrease in bird populations of North America is new phenomenon and has only started some time since 1970. Notably, a lot of the songbirds affected are grassland species that dine on insects, seeds and berries, all of which are covered in or have ingested pesticides at farms. And is known, though not well documented, that insect populations are also plummeting but at a much steeper rate that songbirds.
The Stephens Island Wren says go fuck yourself.
Or they would if they weren’t wiped out by a single cat.
We need to genetically modify cats to only hunt rats.
Good news, they also kill native bush rats!
… Wait that’s bad news.
"We need to genetically modify cats to only hunt introduced rats. " In my area foxes were hunting outdoor cats, so you hardly ever see one. Foxes got baited, and now cats are everywhere. Q is, what is better.
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.
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
