this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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Bigger issue imo is cats destroying wild life not the wild life destroying cats. Either way, keep your cat inside.
So, now you're starving coyotes?
Some of us live in countries that don't really have dangerous wild life and cats have been allowed outside for over 1000 years.
Humans can sustain a large density of cats that wasn't possible in the wild. If it's a pet cat, don't let it hunt. It will imbalance the ecosystem by adding too many predators who don't depend on the prey for sustenance
I always love bringing out this good ol chart.
Fake news. Birds aren't real.
so... cats are the most effective way to combat birds?
yes :)
I might bookmark this one :)
That's simply not true. There were never as many outdoor cats as there is today and cats used to have natural predators everywhere to keep environmental balance which is lost today. Keeping all of your pets indoors (or at least backyard) is the only ethically viable position.
Downvoted by people who don't like facts. There isn't a country in the world with a domestic cat population that wouldn't see a huge benefit to their native wildlife by keeping those pets inside or in a pet run. But people don't like the change or the effort of doing so, so they ignore this inconvenient fact.
We really are a bunch of dumb apes, and we are doomed as a species. Its just a matter of time.
Indeed, pet owners simply don't want to hear the truth which is incredibly irresponsible.
Even if you really must let your cat out there are things you can do like colorful collars with an attached bell which:
https://zenodo.org/records/15210938
I've never seen a cat owner who cares enough to even do that when we have clear evidence this works. The naturalist argument of "oh they are local animals" is such an irresponsible cop out where they can't even bother to put a collar on to diminish the damage. It's inexcusable laziness, nothing else.
Do you live in a building? Like something that was built by humans?
Then you have killed more animals than any cat will ever kill. Your continued use of any kind of lodging is killing animals.
Please stop living inside a man made structure and help destroy said structure so birds can live and take back their habitats.
After you do that, I will stop letting my 15 year old cat outside.
Have a great life!
Lmao what a stupid fallacy thats not even worth responding to. Bye
It's OK, I thought what you wrote was not worthy of my time either, but then I decided to educate actual intelligent people, so I responded.
Im sure there are no birds in turkey, according to your logic.
Yeah I always found the argument absurd as I live on a paved over rectangle with a few square feet of grass my cat likes to poop on while he hangs out with the local squirrels. He is far too lazy to hunt anything, he killed a mouse that was actually inside the house many many years ago but has been a pacifist since. He is 15 he literally wants to sit in the sun and do nothing.
Of course there are some cats who will hunt, and their owners should not allow that. But the blanket statements about environmental impacts, while they cool their house with AC, burn fossil fuels to heat food and go to work, order crap on Amazon...just lacks perspective.
As a cat owner who works in the animal industry, you're suffering from 'my personal experience is reality-itis'.
You can't 'not allow' your cat to hunt. The only chance you have is to keep it inside. Your old cat likely doesn't hunt outside but to think it killed a single mouse it's entire life, is delusional.
Cats don't always show you what they kill. I had a roommate that kept letting my cats out. Never saw them kill anything. Then my neighbor told me about how they were little murder machines while I was out at work. Tried taking out a whole near of baby birds.
I have cameras, and I work from home. He literally does not leave a fenced-in rectangle. I know for a fact he doesn't kill anything.
It very well could be true. But I also don't really think you've been able to watch your cat every moment of his outdoor life to know he literally never goes anywhere and has never killed anything. My cats are indoor only in a tiny apartment and I frequently can't figure out where they are, even when I worked from home.
Bullshit and hearsay.
Those houses you both live in, how many animals were displaced to build them? How many died so your house can exist? You blame cats for the misery we as humans do to species of this planet. Sad
This is bullshit logic. We as adult humans already exist and have little choice about national housing policy. We can however choose not to contribute to suburban sprawl OR murder cats roaming the neighborhood whacking the wildlife. We can also choose not to have 12 children who will need space too. Not being able to do everything is a poor reason not to do anything.
I don't remember blaming cats all man made environmental catastrophes, but whatever.
It's a form of nonsense argument where instead of addressing the actual point someone points at something worse and implies that if we can't stop insert worse thing we somehow needn't worry about insert less worse thing. In actuality presumably they have an outdoor cat and are contributing to the problem and just want to justify it.
Urban sprawl as well.
These cat hater can't even get their heads out of their asses long enough to realize that humans are the biggest issue for wild animals bar none.
We destroy their habitat faster than any cat can hunt, but the cats are literally Hitler in their eyes.
They are delusional in my eyes.
Humans are dangerous wildlife not least because of our cars. That is why indoor cats live 10-20 years and outdoor cats 2-4
It's hardly just cars. They have similar lifespans in areas that aren't so car-centric.
They get parasites. They get into fights with animals in their weight class (like racoons). They get trapped by animals outside their weight class (like wolves). Tons of issues in the wild.
My uncle has a farm with a bunch of feral cats around. I learned at a young age to never get too attached to outdoor farm cats.
This is Michu, he used to live next door to me. He would be outside all the time, even in the freezing cold. Sometimes I’d hear him meowing at the neighbor’s back door to come back in, but nobody would answer. I’d hear the little guy calling out, and nobody would even be home. Sometimes I’d find him curled up on my deck chairs, so I started leaving blankets on them for cold nights. Eventually he started approaching me when I sat outside. We’d chill on the step and watch nature together.
But then a few months ago, he stopped coming. He stopped appearing entirely. When I talked to the neighbors, I learned that he’d contracted a UTI and had died. (Apparently it only takes a few hours for a swollen urethra to kill a male cat.)
Now, I don’t know how much his outdoors lifestyle contributed to his acquisition of a UTI (since they can occur in indoor cats as well, and search engine enshittification is making my search for hard data impossible.) However, I imagine that if Michu had been inside, his people might have noticed he wasn’t healthy.
Honestly, I'm not a vet and I’ve never had a cat, so I don’t feel qualified to tell people how to take care of theirs. This thread just reminded me of how I miss this little guy. He was around 4 years old and still had a lot of love to give. I was just lucky enough to receive some of it.
RIP, Michu ❤️
Where you live perhaps, I don't know anyone that has had an issue here. As I said, some of us live in different countries.
But sure if you live next to a typical American 16 lane backroad you might not want to let them out.