"Outdoor Cat vs Indoor Cat" by Sarah Andersen

Of course it is difficult to find an indoor cat, you only see them inside a house.

I guess we in Finland are Americand now lol

We're more worried about the cats wellbeing though than the birds.

Which is fitting because, in the end, when the hell have the British cared about the fallout of anything they do

Our cats are indoors. They used to be outdoors then some cunt shot one with an air rifle.

I'm not so sure both about Americans having their cats indoors, and "others" having it the opposite way. I have never been to the UK or the US, but most owners I had seen kept their cats indoors. Except for Georgia (the country), where cats seem to be treated as some sort of weed that grows on it's own

There's plenty of Americans with outdoor cats.

So are all the birds dead in the UK

And thats why the wild felines are going extinct in the british isles.

Ay, but tradition right? Fuck the natives, as is british tradition

That’s what you know they have killed. Who knows how much more. They also still get hit by cars, mauled by dogs, attacked by other cats, piss and shit in other people’s yards.

That you know of. I'm a bird lover, I've got my biases, admittedly. But no, cats seem to put a very heavy strain on the local bird population.

And you failed to do so.

30% of bird deaths is still a lot of bird deaths. I would much prefer if cats were only responsible for 40 small animal extinctions rather than the 60 or so that they've caused so far

Thats exactly how cats work.

The comic is funny and cute, but dont get it twisted. The science is pretty firm on the destructive effects of invasive domestic cats.

Nice job getting butthurt

Your other comment drivel makes the irony here quite palpable. It’s delicious.

How is it not?

I know a guy who went through 5 cats in a few months because he was getting them, letting them out, and they were getting hit by cars since he lives on a super busy road that has heavy semi traffic.

It really reminds me of that one joke "I keep having to buy a new car because my neighbors dog keeps eating it" " it sounds like you're just feeding cats to the neighbors dog"

Dude just didn't seem to grasp simple addition that his new cat + outside in a bad area = squish

The only cat I've had that I've felt okay with letting roam was a stray that came to us declawed, so he was mostly harmless. We still ended up making him an inside cat because we caught him sneaking into the neighbor's house to steal their cat's food and poop in its litterbox.

You'll also need to ban pet cats from walking outside without a leash. Our cats were neutered, didn't stop them from killing any mice or birds they could get their paws on.

Mate, we're old enough now to have to actually fix shit instead of waxing lyrical about our youth. Let's work together, and still have a laugh.

They're projecting. There is an industry killing billions of animals which is also very bad for the environment and ecosystems. If only they could be as passionate about that as about someone else's cat…

Do you get off on animals going extinct? What is wrong with you?

"Outdoor domestic cats are a recognized threat to global biodiversity. Cats have contributed to the extinction of 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles in the wild"

Agreed, lol. These people are way too sensitive about pests and birds dying.

I think I watched this one and also a German documentary. It even showed that elderly cats roam way less then younger ones. Pretty interesting.

I loved that doc! It was fascinating seeing the vast differences in territory. I remember one cat who travelled something like a mile back and forth every day on a really narrow area. There was also a pair of cats that had worked out a little territory share amongst themselves, patrolling the same area but always 12 hours apart from each other.

I think you're referring to this scientific experiment.

While we're at it, let's get rid of birds that shit on everything, deer that eat our gardens, raccoons that get in our trash, skunks that dig up our grass ....

I guess some cats love to piss on doors but I don't think much if any property damage is being done by pet cats. I don't think I have ever heard of a cat kiling a pet either.

Cats should be indoor only because they are murder hobos when it comes to wild birds and small animals.

Spreading diesease I can't comment on. What diesease do cats kept as pets spread?

It's entitled of YOU too think that the land, plants, wildlife, and ecology these creatures have lived off of for millennia belong to you. We all share a planet, it's not up to humans to be the arbiters of who can have what and how much and at what time etc etc .

Cats may not be sapient animals, but they are sentient.

Cats survived before us by hunting small mammals and small birds, and they are very effective at getting fed.

The motivation at the core of naming owners of outdoor cats as irresponsible is a sharp decline in songbird populations in direct proportion to the increase in outdoor cat population.

The danger isn't to the cats, it's to everything else. Ecologically speaking, cats are an invasive apex predator. They absolutely wreak havoc on local bird populations.

I think we have different definitions of irresponsible or entitled behavior if you think giving the cat what it wants or otherwise doing whatever our selfish uninformed ancestors did is the correct option.

You should deprive your invasive manmade predator the option to kill local wildlife for sport because the local ecosystem takes irreparable damage every time a species goes extinct due to human incompetence. Cats naturally belonged to a small region of northern Africa and the Mediterranean before humans spread them across the entire earth and let their population boom from hundreds to hundreds of millions.

"Outdoor domestic cats are a recognized threat to global biodiversity. Cats have contributed to the extinction of 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles in the wild"

You shouldn't be proud of contributing to the extinction of animals...

Your cat is your property. Keep it in your property. If your pet becomes my pest, it will be dealt with as such. I once had a neighbor's cat almost rip through my window screen to get inside and go after my pet parrot. If the cat had made it inside, he would not have made it out alive.

Then I could return it's corpse to you, and you can tell me all about how they evolved alongside humans, and how that means you're entitled to let your pet fuck up my yard, home and pets

Wherever there's birds, it's irresponsible to let cats out. NZ in particular, it's a damn massacre out there.

What is different in other places?

Yeah, I can't do it. We have fox around, and plenty of community cats (one evening, I walked down the ravine looking for our dog after he ran off, and I shined my flashlight upward to see about 6 pairs of eyes staring at me). We had a cat get some sort of blood borne disease, we think she got it from a tick that was in the house when we moved in (it's our only theory, we have no idea what actually happened), and she spent a few days in the animal hospital, and barely survived. (It also cost several thousand dollars.) Unfortunately she passed away from multiple medical issues a few years later. :(

(We adopted another cat after she passed - we've never had more than 3 at once.)

we have an indoor cat. I was worried about it so started taking it outside. It would sprint back inside.

So then I took it out and closed the door. It clawed at the door.

I picked her up and moved her off the deck. She bolted under the deck and I had to take up one of the boards to get her out and she ran back inside faster than ever.

My cats come and go as they please, one spends about 90% of her time indoors, the other mostly nights, but is gone during daytime. I usually see her when I walk my dog, she'll creep up from behind a bush and finish the walk with us, come in for a snack and then be gone again.

Far better to die young under a car tire, bleeding out slowly and painfully alone on the asphalt. Totally agree, way better than living your entire lifespan.

Actually managed that once. Basement was half finished by the previous owners but left a hole for the well window. The result was a gap between the window and the drywall. Cat wanted to look out the window and ended up falling onto the insulation. He cried for a while until we figured out where he was, and when we grabbed a ladder to mount a rescue he hauled his own happy ass out unassisted. Same cat also managed to find a way ABOVE the ceiling of a basement closet.

Oh no guys the pandas went extinct because we let our cats out.

I think the only snakes we have are garter snakes, and the biggest birds are vultures.

They are driving local wildcats extinct, and feeding their pets to local foxes, badgers, and car wheels.

Still better than locking them in a cage and never letting them out

I think we have coyotes around, but I can only remember 1 or 2 cats disappearing, and I assumed it was because they were old and didn't want to die inside.

The "catio" idea people have been bringing up seems like it's worth a try, but we need to get our deck repaired for that I think.

That is a really good point I've never thought of or seen mentioned before on these type of threads.!

I'm not really sure how long housecats have been around in this area. I think historically there were a lot of farms here (in the 1800s) so they may have had cats, but I don't have historical data.

We didn't get cats to hunt down mice, but it's pretty rare that we see them, and it's an old farmhouse, so maybe we're relying on their hunting implicitly? I've occasionally seen them catch and eat mice around the yard, and sometimes they bring one to the door to show off.

There are supposedly coyotes around, but I don't think I've ever seen one here, and we've only ever had cats just disappear a couple times, and they were already 17-19. The bigger danger seems to be other outdoor cats (not sure if they're feral or not) that one of ours occasionally fights with, but the vet knows they go outdoors, and they're up-to-date on all their shots.

Cats can learn to move without jingling the bells and they learn that fast.

As an American, I have never seen an animal shelter adoption contract that didn't have a clause about never letting the cat outside. Obviously there are exceptions for leashes and catios, but you get the idea

Yeah I only know this viewpoint from posters in the US. In Europe I only know the prevailing notion that keeping cats indoors is cruel and they should be outside. Exceptions for large cities ofc but I only know social pressure to get cats out, not keep them in.

That's not true. I have 2 rescue cats currently indoor only and have had more previously. There's a few rescues I can think of that look for outdoor homes, and a few who are strictly indoor, but most are quite open minded.

We don’t let small children cross the street by themselves. That’s because kids have no concept of what a street is, or how dangerous it is. Same for cats, but add in plenty of predators and diseases. Outdoor cats have a much shorter life expectancy than indoor cats.

I do live like that.

Importantly, while cats are safer indoors, vulnerable wildlife is much safer when cats are indoors.

You running in forests, hunting for food with bare hands, fighting with bears for survival?

And should dogs be let out to roam free too?

That's my thought exactly. But they have the mind of a child, so there has to be a middle ground especially if living in a town or busy street. No idea what that could be. If only cats would stay inside the yard, or a cat park like dogs lol.

But keeping them indoors 100% of the time? Total wrong end of the spectrum, borderline abuse.

Lmao humans are able to look at a car and think "I'm not gonna dart in front of that"

Sometimes you Americans are just really weird.

I assume this only applies ro domestic felines?

I think humans far outweigh the cats in the scale for harm done to animal populations on this earth.

Are we gonna really start policing whether or not people let their cats out over some dumb birds?

Accordingly to my cat (and apparently Sarah Andersen's), this is a reliable way to give a stray a new home:
\

[Serious now, we should be more active on that. Also to discourage people from letting cats to "take a walk" unsupervised.]

Depends on if you live on a farm or not*

It's not like European outdoor cats don't murder wildlife and get killed

No no, the whole world is suburban North America.

What's that point of living more? You'd prefer to live more in a cage? That's not a point at all. I can understand the wildlife reasoning, but then we should just forbid cats in those places then

Imagine getting a highly evolved killer as a pet, perfectly tuned for a life of exploration, combat and death, and forcing them to live a long, soft boring life.

Here here.

YOU, as a human, are infinitely more responsible for hundreds of extinct species so stfu