this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Outdoor cats should be illegal
https://daily.jstor.org/environmental-danger-outdoor-cats/
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.
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.
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.
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
Australia already has dingos, which are like coyotes except they eat babies instead of cats.
You paint a whole house and nobody calls you a painter, but you eat one baby...
"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 mean you are partially right. Bringing back wolves would help in NA. They are supposed to be a part of the ecosystem and might help keep coyotes in check to a degree at least and would certainly keep killer deer population is n check. They were eliminated more out of fear than legitimate threat and killer deer have now far exceeded human threat compared to wolves.
China
I like the way you think
The number of birds killed by cats per year matches ironically the number of animals us humans kill per day for food if we include marine animals. 😄
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.
Suggesting or thinking that this issue only applies to cats in USA / North America is uninformed at best.
Australia has ~650 million lizards killed each year by feral and outdoor cats, ~225/cat
As of 2013, Canada has 100-350 million birds killed by cats each year
As of 2021, China estimates based on public survey's that "1.61–4.95 billion invertebrates, 1.61–3.58 billion fishes, 1.13–3.82 billion amphibians, 1.48–4.31 billion reptiles, 2.69–5.52 billion birds, and 3.61–9.80 billion mammals" there each year"
Cats and other vermin are absolutely destroying native populations in New Zealand as all of the birds there evolved with essentially no native predators.
South Africa, Cape Town alone estimates that 300k cats kill 27.5m critters each year
This is not unique to the states. Keep your cats inside.
Not to mention like in Europe multiple species of native small cats are being pushed out and outbred by feral and outdoor cats
Keep your moggies inside for their sake people! Also for, y'know, all the birds and small mammals killed by them and the fact that your pet can pick up some goddawful diseases from being outdoors and still have a shorter life expectancy than indoor ones
Honestly for me the risk of them getting severely injured in a cat fight or getting hit by a car is enough for them to be strictly "indoor cats" unless they are on a leash with a well fit harness.
Tbh I can't believe we're at a point where "keep your cats inside they live longer and don't risk infection or injury or death" is straight up not enough to convince people to keep their pets which they love and cherish inside. Like I admit I'm biased - I'm a bird person and my main stake in this argument is the local wildlife. But at the same time...it's kinda ridiculous that people would rather risk all that than bother to entertain and interact with and exercise their cats like you would with most other pets?
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.