Typical internet cats. Videos, pics, memes, and discussion welcome!
Rule 1) Be kind
Rule 2) Follow the lemmy.world rules
other cat communities midwest.social cats
"Outdoor cats" are an invasive species that kill billions of animals every year, are a significant contributor to dozens of species' extinction, and live shorter lives than cats properly cared for (i.e. kept indoors) including nearly 3x the risk for infections.
It's a plague. We can't keep normalizing this.
Thanks tech, did not appreciate the original post b/c of how lightly it treats the killing of wonderful beautiful birbs
"Outdoor cats" are just cats. They are not a domesticated species, hunting is their instinct, and should just not be introduced in places where they wreck havoc to the environment. Where they are endemic (Europe and continental Asia) they don't cause troubles to the ecosystem
Wrong. Outdoor cats pose a significant risk to birds in Europe as well, especially because Europe has massively reduced the habitat of wildlife in recent centuries.
Cats found 200-500 meters away from any property are shot by hunters in Germany. Between 2007 and 2022 over 160,000 cats were killed in just 5/16 German states (the remaining one's don't publish numbers).
Source? Never heard of that. German sources are fine as well.
That's where the 160,000 deaths number came from. The largest German nature conservation NGO is also quoted as saying cats are a danger to birds.
A single district in Northern Germany has had 660 cats shot within a year. In the dstrict's state 2580 cats were shot in total. Note that the "landesweit" doesn't refer to countrywide but rather to statewide (as German states are called "federal countries").
As long as you spend time providing your cat proper enrichment to express their hunting instincts, an indoor cat will be just as happy as an outdoor cat.
Yeah but birds aren't real.
Going into your own backyard is a lot different than running through the neighborhood uninhibited.
Cats don't give a fuck about 'property lines'. Period.
Cats will kill even when they don't need to feed. Lock them up.
I love our cat, and I don't want to see it squished in half by a car. I keep it inside. It's a rescue, I know it was an outdoor cat before. It's fine now.
you'd need a very special backyard to fence a cat in
My dad actually did this with their patio. It's fenced in with a 2.5m high net. Of course, this assumes the cat in question is docile enough to not want to climb it, which their current cat happens to be.
The whole reason for the fenced patio is because of their previous cat, which became blind at old age. So she could then still safely explore the outdoors.
You can do this, true. However, this obviously isn't true for this post because it implies it's normal for the other cats to bring in dead animals, which probably wouldn't happen in a screened in patio.
and there's this great news: https://scitechdaily.com/bird-flu-is-now-killing-cats-at-a-90-fatality-rate-experts-warn-it-could-jump-to-humans/
This is the opposite of great
Those numbers are suspect. https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/02/03/170851048/do-we-really-know-that-cats-kill-by-the-billions-not-so-fast and probably are a majority unowned cats. It's not important to make sure your cat is spayed or neutered than making sure it stays indoors.
What you've presented is a deeply biased opinion piece, and it wears this immense bias on its sleeve. It fearmongers that thinking about cats as killing wildlife could cause "extremism" (it then cites as its lone example a man who suggested banning cats in New Zealand; soooo scary). It cites some organization called "Alley Cat Allies" who call it extremely biased with ostensibly zero credentials. They cite lobbyist and serial sexual harasser Wayne Pacelle formerly of the Humane Society who questions the methodology but even concedes: "We don't quarrel with the conclusion that the impact is big." And lastly, King herself does her own analysis on this meta-analysis' methodology despite being – I emphasize – a professor of anthropology with no background in this field.
So your article has no one familiar with this field who could challenge if these statistical assumptions are actually reasonable. And here, given the authors are experts (and absent some published literature rebutting this in the 12 years since), I have no reason to believe their methodology would be so off as to meaningfully change the idea that "outdoor cats" are severely problematic.
I want you to know that I read through and appreciate this in depth write up and critique of the previous person's source/citation.
A vegetarian!
Cats are so different. Our current ones bring in so many little critters and let them go in the house, still alive, we had to close the cat door so we can check them before they come in. A past cat used to bring us paper and paper-like items, from food wrappers to people's junk mail, and one time the next door kid's report card. My wife's theory was that that cat thought paper things would please us because she saw us doing a lot of things with paper - we used to do a lot of printing. But I think the cat just didn't really get the whole hunting concept.
Fuck me that is adorable! Well done, Larry, you are indeed a mighty hunter!
I'm so proud of my little hunters when we play with toys that simulate prey. They're so fierce. Larry will become fierce. Good job, hunter! Good job, good job!
Maybe he's a vegan
So cute. I miss my cats so much. ❤️
