4 ms·

Once again bunch armchair neckbeards downvoting and trolling people fully based on opinion. As a multiple cat owner with decades of experience and someone who

Once again bunch armchair neckbeards downvoting and trolling people fully based on opinion. As a multiple cat owner with decades of experience and someone who has rescued many cats off the street in NY(T&R because yes its not good to have hundreds of strays per block), you downvoters have zero context here and your comments have been nothing but opinions. Heres a super simple usecase that can shut you all up. People have indoor cats escape! This is traumatizing to owners, like a family member being abducted. It can go on for months and yes, people find their pets (we did), at great cost and burden. And before you go claiming irresponsibility, this happen to us when someone broken into our unit. So fuck off please. There is research on how indoor cars live happier healthier lives that are yes 10x longer, because outdoor cats literally die at 1 and 2 years old (they are adults) and indoor cats live to be 20+

demondemidi 3y ago
Sad that a vitriolic rant with zero technical discussion is the top post. This is hacker news, not whinging news. I think the design is too big and the battery life too uncompelling but open source means better luck at being improved. Amazon sells a lot of bunk as I’ve tried a few and only had luck with jiobit. I’d like to tinker with this.
- spacecadet 3y ago
  Actually agreed. I work in hardware and have given people all the same feedback to the question/realization that "my pets chip is not a tracker"... Its not practical to attach this to pet. And PS, I like to rant at hacker news, the community is so boring otherwise.
- jalcazar 3y ago
  Which shows how bad are other comments, e.g., the one saying: "The solution is simple: keep the [cats] indoors"
aranw 3y ago
I find it sometimes genuinely upsetting to see the negativity in some comments. Different views are cool and for some people something might seem more obvious to them than to others, but there's a way to share without tearing down. Constructive feedback is one thing but no need to be negative for the sake of being negative
devmor 3y ago
I have had my indoor cats get out before, it sucks. I currently have AirTags on their collars but something like this with real gps would be way better. I just wish it were smaller.
- wink 3y ago
  All the people I know don't have collars on their indoor cats... that's the part where I was left scratching my head :P
  - yakubin 3y ago
    > I was left scratching my head I’ve heard a collar might help with that.
    - wink 3y ago
      Isn't that what the cone of shame is for? And I think my arms are relatively longer than the feline ones...
  - devmor 3y ago
    Ours didn’t used to, but when we hired someone to watch them while on vacation we realized it was a good idea. They could get out due to carelessness, or a broken window screen. They could also end up out and alone in the confusion of something like a house fire. A lot of people with indoor cats also leash train them.
  - fullstop 3y ago
    3/4 of mine have collars with RFID tags on them to control how much food they get from the automated feeder. They didn't care for them too much at first, but they quickly learned that it was their meal ticket. The fourth cat doesn't have one because she can't eat kibble without it causing urinary problems.
marginalia_nu 3y ago
> outdoor cats literally die at 1 and 2 years old (they are adults) and indoor cats live to be 20+ Where do you live? We had outdoor cats live until they were 19 and 17, both passed from age-related illness. Relatively calm neighborhood away from any heavy traffic, granted; but still.
- enlyth 3y ago
  There seem to be large cultural differences and they have their reasons. For one, the average area of a house in the USA seems to be above 2000 square feet, whereas here in the UK it's more like 750 or so. It feels worse for the animal to be cramped in a tiny space all their life, so we let them outside. Also there are no predators apart from the occasional domesticated dog, so it's safer. The biggest risk is traffic, which is dependent on where you live. The bird thing brought up every time is weird to me, because no one seems to care about birds until cats are part of the conversation, suddenly birds are the most important part of the ecosystem.
  - xeromal 3y ago
    We learn new things over time. Birds are wildly important to the world's ecosystems. House cats, not so much. They're more useful to humans in keeping rodents away from our food but that's not as necessary these days.
  - xkcd-sucks 3y ago
    The supposed impact on bird life seems possibly quite overstated. Extensive personal experience suggests that (at least the cats that select me to live with) do not catch many birds at all. Of the current cat with free-ish outdoor access: Last year birds accounted for 3.6 percent of all recorded catches (5/138). This year birds are 1.7 percent of all recorded catches (1/58). And all of the birds I've seen caught first knocked themselves out striking windows, or flew inside the house via open door and injured themselves trying to escape in panic. The healthy ones don't let cats near them at all. Of the prior cat, zero birds over 9 years. Of the cat before that, maybe 1 or 2 birds over 18 years. Of course anecdotes aren't data etc, but, the impact of data is its story, and anecdotes direct and constrain the collection and analysis of data.
optymizer 3y ago
Just because you may be right when others may be wrong is not a valid reason to disrespect other people. "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) Downvoted and flagged.
deleted 3y ago
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squarefoot 3y ago
If cats escape from their house, either the owners behave like royal a-holes with them, or very likely they were not spayed/neutered. I'm sorry for some self defined animal lovers, but by not spaying/neutering a domestic cat they're actually harming it, in a very cruel way. Cats aren't people: many times during their life they feel the absolute urge to reproduce and cannot fight against this need with reasoning like humans because it's purely an instinct that can become stressful and very dangerous for their physical and mental health if not satisfied. I've had family members who were against spaying/neutering and had all their cats escape, even multiple times by throwing themselves off the balcony (2nd floor luckily, they all survived), and all of them eventually developed very aggressive behavior against humans although they definitely were house cats. All my cats (all neutered) never tried to escape from our old city apartment, aside the obvious exploring the hall beyond the house door, and now that we live in a small town in a cottage with garden and trees my two cats both enjoy wandering around the property, but they eventually come home for the night. It wasn't that easy: they had to fight for territory since this property has been kept empty for years so that it was easily taken by the neighborhood cats, but so far it looks like our cats won.
- fullstop 3y ago
  > If cats escape from their house, either the owners behave like royal a-holes with them, or very likely they were not spayed/neutered. Hard disagree here. All four of my cats are spayed or neutered and the one is determined to go out and explore. She will sneak behind your back and fly through the door as it closes. She looks peaceful and sleeping across the room, but don't let that fool you -- she springs to life and flies out the door when you least expect it. She once escaped through a basement window, about 6 feet above the floor with no objects below it, through a gap which was just a few inches wide. I got her back about three days later by setting up a motion activated camera and a bowl of food outside. I've fostered over 50 cats now so I feel like I know and understand their behavior pretty well by this point.
  - squarefoot 3y ago
    > All four of my cats are spayed or neutered and the one is determined to go out and explore. We don't disagree here, I never wrote that neutered/spayed cats don't want to explore, that's normal behavior for every feline out there, but that those who aren't can suffer a lot from being forced home. For cats which aren't spayed or neutered it isn't just about exploring anymore but satisfying their urge to mate, and they won't return until that need is satisfied, if they do.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

demondemidi 3y ago

Sad that a vitriolic rant with zero technical discussion is the top post. This is hacker news, not whinging news. I think the design is too big and the battery life too uncompelling but open source means better luck at being improved. Amazon sells a lot of bunk as I’ve tried a few and only had luck with jiobit. I’d like to tinker with this.

spacecadet 3y ago
Actually agreed. I work in hardware and have given people all the same feedback to the question/realization that "my pets chip is not a tracker"... Its not practical to attach this to pet. And PS, I like to rant at hacker news, the community is so boring otherwise.
jalcazar 3y ago
Which shows how bad are other comments, e.g., the one saying: "The solution is simple: keep the [cats] indoors"

aranw 3y ago

I find it sometimes genuinely upsetting to see the negativity in some comments. Different views are cool and for some people something might seem more obvious to them than to others, but there's a way to share without tearing down. Constructive feedback is one thing but no need to be negative for the sake of being negative

devmor 3y ago

I have had my indoor cats get out before, it sucks. I currently have AirTags on their collars but something like this with real gps would be way better. I just wish it were smaller.

wink 3y ago
All the people I know don't have collars on their indoor cats... that's the part where I was left scratching my head :P
- yakubin 3y ago
  > I was left scratching my head I’ve heard a collar might help with that.
  - wink 3y ago
    Isn't that what the cone of shame is for? And I think my arms are relatively longer than the feline ones...
- devmor 3y ago
  Ours didn’t used to, but when we hired someone to watch them while on vacation we realized it was a good idea. They could get out due to carelessness, or a broken window screen. They could also end up out and alone in the confusion of something like a house fire. A lot of people with indoor cats also leash train them.
- fullstop 3y ago
  3/4 of mine have collars with RFID tags on them to control how much food they get from the automated feeder. They didn't care for them too much at first, but they quickly learned that it was their meal ticket. The fourth cat doesn't have one because she can't eat kibble without it causing urinary problems.

marginalia_nu 3y ago

> outdoor cats literally die at 1 and 2 years old (they are adults) and indoor cats live to be 20+ Where do you live? We had outdoor cats live until they were 19 and 17, both passed from age-related illness. Relatively calm neighborhood away from any heavy traffic, granted; but still.

enlyth 3y ago
There seem to be large cultural differences and they have their reasons. For one, the average area of a house in the USA seems to be above 2000 square feet, whereas here in the UK it's more like 750 or so. It feels worse for the animal to be cramped in a tiny space all their life, so we let them outside. Also there are no predators apart from the occasional domesticated dog, so it's safer. The biggest risk is traffic, which is dependent on where you live. The bird thing brought up every time is weird to me, because no one seems to care about birds until cats are part of the conversation, suddenly birds are the most important part of the ecosystem.
- xeromal 3y ago
  We learn new things over time. Birds are wildly important to the world's ecosystems. House cats, not so much. They're more useful to humans in keeping rodents away from our food but that's not as necessary these days.
- xkcd-sucks 3y ago
  The supposed impact on bird life seems possibly quite overstated. Extensive personal experience suggests that (at least the cats that select me to live with) do not catch many birds at all. Of the current cat with free-ish outdoor access: Last year birds accounted for 3.6 percent of all recorded catches (5/138). This year birds are 1.7 percent of all recorded catches (1/58). And all of the birds I've seen caught first knocked themselves out striking windows, or flew inside the house via open door and injured themselves trying to escape in panic. The healthy ones don't let cats near them at all. Of the prior cat, zero birds over 9 years. Of the cat before that, maybe 1 or 2 birds over 18 years. Of course anecdotes aren't data etc, but, the impact of data is its story, and anecdotes direct and constrain the collection and analysis of data.

optymizer 3y ago

Just because you may be right when others may be wrong is not a valid reason to disrespect other people. "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) Downvoted and flagged.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

squarefoot 3y ago

If cats escape from their house, either the owners behave like royal a-holes with them, or very likely they were not spayed/neutered. I'm sorry for some self defined animal lovers, but by not spaying/neutering a domestic cat they're actually harming it, in a very cruel way. Cats aren't people: many times during their life they feel the absolute urge to reproduce and cannot fight against this need with reasoning like humans because it's purely an instinct that can become stressful and very dangerous for their physical and mental health if not satisfied. I've had family members who were against spaying/neutering and had all their cats escape, even multiple times by throwing themselves off the balcony (2nd floor luckily, they all survived), and all of them eventually developed very aggressive behavior against humans although they definitely were house cats. All my cats (all neutered) never tried to escape from our old city apartment, aside the obvious exploring the hall beyond the house door, and now that we live in a small town in a cottage with garden and trees my two cats both enjoy wandering around the property, but they eventually come home for the night. It wasn't that easy: they had to fight for territory since this property has been kept empty for years so that it was easily taken by the neighborhood cats, but so far it looks like our cats won.

fullstop 3y ago
> If cats escape from their house, either the owners behave like royal a-holes with them, or very likely they were not spayed/neutered. Hard disagree here. All four of my cats are spayed or neutered and the one is determined to go out and explore. She will sneak behind your back and fly through the door as it closes. She looks peaceful and sleeping across the room, but don't let that fool you -- she springs to life and flies out the door when you least expect it. She once escaped through a basement window, about 6 feet above the floor with no objects below it, through a gap which was just a few inches wide. I got her back about three days later by setting up a motion activated camera and a bowl of food outside. I've fostered over 50 cats now so I feel like I know and understand their behavior pretty well by this point.
- squarefoot 3y ago
  > All four of my cats are spayed or neutered and the one is determined to go out and explore. We don't disagree here, I never wrote that neutered/spayed cats don't want to explore, that's normal behavior for every feline out there, but that those who aren't can suffer a lot from being forced home. For cats which aren't spayed or neutered it isn't just about exploring anymore but satisfying their urge to mate, and they won't return until that need is satisfied, if they do.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]