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Spanish Shipwreck Reveals Evidence of Earliest Known Pet Cats to Arrive in US
- pandemic_region 1y agoI love cats but I cannot deal with the inevitable cleanup of the litter box.
- the_third_wave 1y agoMove to a farm and get some outside cats, they shit in the woods but come home overnight. If they don't they get eaten by foxes etc. so they better. We never had a litter box until the cat turned 15 and started to become less willing to go out in the snow. Ok, moving to a farm just to get some outside cats might be slightly overdoing it but there's loads more reasons why you want to live on a farm, preferably somewhere out in the woods so you might as well enjoy the cats which come with the territory.
- zemvpferreira 1y agoAround here (Portugal) plenty of people have outside cats in the city and suburbs, it’s great. However there’s a chance they’ll decide not to come back to you.
- pandemic_region 1y agoSee, I am the only house owner in the street without a cat. Guess whose garden is very frequently visited by literally all the cats? Isn't there some plants to repel them? And no I'm not getting a dog
- diggan 1y agoGo to your local gardener and ask for plants that repels cats/has scents cats don't like and plant them where you notice they use as a bathroom. Some people plant plants with thorns/prickles too, which seems to help a bit after the cats learn it hurts. Most obvious solution otherwise is to have a fence if you don't have one already.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoWhat kind of fence keeps out cats? They are pretty good climbers and jumpers.
- diggan 1y agoA fence where the top part protrudes outwards towards the side of the invaders. Aka "anti-cat fence".
- hilbert42 1y ago"However there’s a chance they’ll decide not to come back to you." That's good reason to own a dog. ;-)
- the_third_wave 1y agoSome dogs like to roam just like cats, we had one of those. Dog gone again, call the next farm, dog there? Nope, not this time. Explore the forest to find him a few kilometers off eating from a moose carcass, joy. Once home he vomits up half a moose which he wants to eat again. Yes that's dogs for you.
- antidumbass 1y agoDo they groom themselves of ticks?
- drooby 1y agoI've spent a lot of money trying to solve this problem.. including buying the $700 litter robot, etc.. (that thing is not worth it at all btw) The best litter box is the Tidy Cats Breeze (if your cat accepts it) Bad smells (usually) (mostly) come from urine mixing with feces.. this litter box separates urine from feces, and the pellets and pads are engineered to control odors. Plus, the pellets are easier to cleanup than other boxes.. If you use that litter box, and feed your cat foods that it digests well - which in general usually means feeding your cat healthy food.. then cleanup is going to be very easy and painless.
- VWWHFSfQ 1y ago> the $700 litter robot, etc.. (that thing is not worth it at all btw) I can confirm this as well. For one, it doesn't even work that well. You're still doing a lot of manual scraping and cleanup too. The thing also just scares the cat. And if you know anything about cats, they're very particular about their litter box, especially about privacy and a sense of "safety". A motor and loud sounds coming from their litter box at various times throughout the day is not generally something they will feel comfortable with and it's possible that they just won't even use it at all.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 1y agoAs an opposing anecdote, one of my cats loves watching it when it activates, and will hang out in the thing for fun (not while it's cleaning, of course). But only 1 of the 3 cats wants anything to do with it. We didn't pay $700 for it, though. They had a sale a while ago on the previous model, and it was less than half that price.
- tguvot 1y agozero manual scrapping and cleanup here. secret is in using proper clamping litter
- hbarka 1y agoBad smell in urine comes from ammonia, nothing to do with mixing. The quality and mechanism of the litter helps to neutralize it. Also I’ll take an automatic machine over manual. The market was junk ten years ago but there’s some good ones out lately, like Petkit, Popur, or Casa Leo.
- walthamstow 1y agoAt least you don't have to scoop it up in the street in front of everyone like a dog owner.
- 0_____0 1y agoI watched a guy in the park hold the bag directly under the dog. Now that's efficiency!
- CaptainOfCoit 1y agoWe should just invent what we had for horses in cities but for dogs, a little poopy-collector dangling from their hips at all time, that catches it just like that guy in the park.
- russfink 1y agoSlide a paper towel under the dog before the first dropping, then scooping with a bag goes smoothly - little to no residue left on the grass.
- astura 1y agoHopefully it's always "in front of everyone" because dog owners only pick up poop if someone is watching.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y agoTrue, this is why I always look around when my dog poops, so I can evaluate if I should pick it up or not. Usually I leave it so people like astura can get mad when they step on it.
- Mistletoe 1y agoHaving a cat door changed our life.
- simplesolutionZ 1y agoI just let mine shit outside, and it also gets to enjoy the outdoors. Problem solved.
- hollywood_court 1y agoYet you create so many additional problems by allowing your cat to roam outside.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y agoYou don't know this, but instead assuming parent lives in some suburban area with lots of other cats. They could be living outside in the woods, 5km to any close settlement, with minimal side-effects of having a cat outside (besides the side-effect of having a few less rodents around). But no, lets have a knee-jerk reaction to anyone who has an outside cat, without understanding any of the context. Besides, many people put bells on their cats, and then they're unlikely to catch anything at all in the wilderness.
- hollywood_court 1y agoTIL I learned that birds are rodents.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y agoMaybe I've just had stupid cats, but they never managed to catch any birds, even when they were without bells. Plenty of mouse offerings though, but seems the bells help with that too.
- hollywood_court 1y agoAhh now I get it. Your opinion on the matter is based on your personal anecdotes. I apologize. I was thinking of all of the empirical data that shows how cats are able to cause so much harm to the ecosystems they roam. I love my cats. I’d never let them outside just out of respect for my neighbors and the fauna.
- Oarch 1y ago"Additionally, they’ve discovered the remains of several critters, including cockroaches, rats and at least two domestic cats." The idea that we've recovered identifiable cockroaches that have been submerged for almost 500 years breaks a few ideas I had about reality.
- Onavo 1y agoThey don't rot if there's no oxygen
- oulipo 1y agoisn't there oxygen in H2O ?
- ndileas 1y agoThere's very little free oxygen in the water below certain depths, actually!
- oulipo 1y agoInteresting, thanks!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mystified5016 1y agoThe oxygen inside water molecules is chemically bound and not really available for other work. Water does carry dissolved gases like O2 gas, but as sibling pointed out, not at these depths.
- oulipo 1y agoInteresting, thanks!
- hilbert42 1y ago
- snvzz 1y agoIt is sad; These cats did not make it.
- xandrius 1y agoNo cat from 500 years ago made it, as far as we know.
- ghaff 1y agoCats--which as I recall are descended from African wildcats--are arguably the most successful carnivores around. They're incredibly adaptable.
- simion314 1y ago>Cats--which as I recall are descended from African wildcats--are arguably the most successful carnivores around. They're incredibly adaptable. I live in a village in Romania, a lot of cats get killed by cars, I always have an old cat that seems to be more smarted and survives for long time, but most younger cats get killed before 1 year. You would think they are smart and plus evolution that filters out the less adapted one the cats would be capable to avoid cars. Here we do not keep cats locked inside so it is sad but there is nothing we can do about this.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoPedestrians still get hit by cars. You’d think people would evolve, no? In both cases the rate of car accidents is not sufficient to kill off large portions of the species and apply very strong selective pressure for individuals who are immune towards this. In either case when you compare stats like success rates per hunt, housecats are some of the most successful hunters on earth.
- simion314 1y agoIn my life I am not aware of anyone getting killed by a car in my village, where a few of my cars were killed and I seen many cat bodies on the side of the road. Also people do not claim that are a top predator with high agility, vision and reflexes.
- TMEHpodcast 1y agoI’m surprised there would be any skeletal remains at all after 400+ years. The article is light on science but the original paper mentions Isotopic analysis which is very interesting.
- more_corn 1y agoI mean… these might be the easiest known cats, but I’m not sure they arrived.
- fsckboy 1y ago>The two felines—one adult, one juvenile—appear to have been cared for by the sailors so, these were ship's cats rather than passenger or cargo cats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship%27s_cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship%27s_cat "The ship's cat has been a common feature on many trading, exploration, and naval ships dating to ancient times... most importantly to control rodents" and one presumes others were on most every other ship to have plied those waters