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Probably best to keep your cats inside even if you do get another one, considering the devastating effect they have as an invasive species on local wildlife. [1

Probably best to keep your cats inside even if you do get another one, considering the devastating effect they have as an invasive species on local wildlife. [1] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380

bpodgursky 1y ago
If your cat actually eats what they kill (ours did) it's not nicer for the environment to turn forest into farmland to grow corn to feed chickens to turn into cat food. You're just pushing the environmental impact somewhere you can't see it.
- tristan957 1y ago
  From the abstract of the article: > We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. I don't understand how to marry the point you're trying to make to this. Cats are an invasive species to most small animals, and should be kept from accessing them. In addition to the havoc they wreak on local small animal populations, outdoor cats live shorter lives than their indoor counterparts. https://www.vetinfo.com/indoor-outdoor-cat-life-expectancy.html https://www.vetinfo.com/indoor-outdoor-cat-life-expectancy.h...
  - op00to 1y ago
    > I don’t understand […] They’re willfully ignoring the facts and indulging in emotional projection. Domestic cats aren’t wild animals, they’re pets. Letting them roam outdoors is irresponsible both to local ecosystems and to the cats themselves. Many dogs will run right out the door if left to their own devices, but somehow this is not ok while the same behavior for cats is. Very strange.
    - whycome 1y ago
      I think they're pointing out also that humans themselves are an invasive species. They've killed wildlife and converted fertile land to monocultures. Letting humans roam outdoors tends to be irresponsible to local ecosystems.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      > Many dogs will run right out the door if left to their own devices, but somehow this is not ok while the same behavior for cats is. That's not at all difficult to explain. The dog is a nuisance to the nearby humans.
      - dmonitor 1y ago
        Nobody cares about their pets being a nuisance. They care because dogs are more likely to get lost and not find their way home or get hit by a car.
  - 827a 1y ago
    Realistically, in much of the US both urban and rural, cats are as much a part of the wildlife as whatever animal purists actually want to call wildlife. You can spay, neuter, domesticate, and indoor them as much as humans are capable of doing; but they breed like, well, cats, and they deeply want the freedom of being outside. Most modern dogs would not survive if humans didn't intervene in their survival; but the vast majority of cats would. Humans don't generally actively participate in inciting cat breeding like we do with dogs; in fact, we try to stop it as much as we can. What you're describing is just... nature. Its harsh, its brutal, but cats are a very natural part of our ecosystem. Even the term "domesticated cat" is a partial, minor misnomer [1]. They aren't really domesticated in the same way dogs are. They're wild animals, who's wild behavior just happens to be kinda chill and mesh well with humans. Cats do live longer when you keep them inside. Humans would also live longer if we kept them in a prison for their entire life, feeding them a nutritionally perfect slurry. Not sure why its relevant to the discussion. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian-are-cats-domesticated-180955111/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-s...
  - bpodgursky 1y ago
    You could try thinking about it. Buying cat food at the store isn't magic. It comes from somewhere. Cats can eat the wildlife in your yard. Or, you could have wildlife in your yard, and offset the calories by growing them on more farmland somewhere else. The only difference in the second scenario is that you don't see the extra acre of woods — along with all the lizards and birds that would live there — getting turned into soybeans.
    - sosborn 1y ago
      "Feral Cats are wild-living variant of the common pet cat, introduced to Hawai‘i by Europeans. Feral cats have established populations on all eight of the main Hawaiian Islands and contribute to widespread ecological disruptions that threaten native Hawaiian wildlife. Feral cats are one of the most devastating predators of Hawai‘i’s unique wildlife. In addition to direct predation, feral cats also spread a potentially lethal parasite (Toxoplasma gondii) that contaminates terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments and has been shown to negatively impact birds and mammals – including humans." https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/feral-cats/ https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/...
    - noelwelsh 1y ago
      Most pet food is made from waste from producing human food. E.g. offal. So I'm not sure pet food accounts for any significant loss of wild land on its own.
southernplaces7 1y ago
This gets trotted right out every time someone mentions their cat being let outside, as if it were some sort of awful sin and thus makes the cat's owner totally wrong in any worry or complaint they have about their cat's safety outdoors. It's ridiculous, particularly when there's a very easy solution to cats hunting local birds: a collar with a little bell. It's nearly guaranteed to ruin their hunting. That aside, you yourself, as a human, are an invasive species that kills tons of animals indirectly through your habits each year, should you thus be enclosed 24 hours a day? Cats killing off random birds. The ship of human intervention in the ecosystem has long since sailed, and blaming cat owners for a relatively tiny part of it is an absurdity in badly applied blame.
- dmonitor 1y ago
  You're allowed to let your cat outside and kill nature, but you aren't allowed to be mad when nature fights back. The double standard with which people treat feral dogs/cats (treating kill shelters for overpopulation as an awful sin) versus how they treat snakes and alligators (go into the woods and kill them on sight just for existing) makes me nauseous.
  - southernplaces7 1y ago
    >You're allowed to let your cat outside and kill nature, but you aren't allowed to be mad when nature fights back. Feel free to smugly tell me that same thing whenever some animal or human you love is killed off by some element of nature. Its also hypocritical: Your comfortable, modern existence is absolutely, wholly the product of a colossal bending and crushing of nature to human will that let you sit at a laptop or on your phone and complain about people who simply recognize this practical reality in a more direct and basic context. Also, I have no problem with culling feral cats and dogs if their populations can't also be controlled with more humane things like sterilization campaigns. Why let them starve and suffer pointlessly?
- chomp 1y ago
  Bad take. Letting your cat experience nature means you need to be ok with nature experiencing your cat.
Tade0 1y ago
You can always walk your cat on a leash. It's a unique experience and very different from walking a dog. My SO would occasionally unleash our cat and run alongside it.
trhway 1y ago
>Probably best to keep your cats inside even if you do get another one, considering the devastating effect they have as an invasive species on local wildlife. [1] >[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 You're posting an article by the Smithsonian department employing that felon convicted for animal cruelty toward cats. Wrt. the article itself - it has pretty much no scientific merits as, not surprisingly given the authors' agenda, the article has an obvious fundamental flaw disqualifying it from science - it doesn't specify how many of that wildlife killed by cats were old/ill who would be anyway killed by other predators if it were a natural setting and not a developed area where the only predators left are cats. If we to believe the article's total numbers then it would really mean what the cats are just doing the job of other predators pushed out by humans. Killing the old/ill birds, reptiles, mammals by predators is good for those birds, reptiles, mammals species. (and around humans say an old/ill bird not killed by cats would become a dead bird and a food for rats or something like this)
- jhide 1y ago
  You’re just stating a trait of animal predation. Predation often eliminates the weakest animals in a population. The point is that invasive species by definition of invasive predate in a way that their prey has not had adequate evolutionary space to adapt to because they are introduced. All the words in that sentence have precise definitions in ecology and I don’t think we share the same framework or definitions
  - trhway 1y ago
    name natural predators supposed to kill all those birds and mammals around humans.

bpodgursky 1y ago

If your cat actually eats what they kill (ours did) it's not nicer for the environment to turn forest into farmland to grow corn to feed chickens to turn into cat food. You're just pushing the environmental impact somewhere you can't see it.

tristan957 1y ago
From the abstract of the article: > We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. I don't understand how to marry the point you're trying to make to this. Cats are an invasive species to most small animals, and should be kept from accessing them. In addition to the havoc they wreak on local small animal populations, outdoor cats live shorter lives than their indoor counterparts. https://www.vetinfo.com/indoor-outdoor-cat-life-expectancy.html https://www.vetinfo.com/indoor-outdoor-cat-life-expectancy.h...
- op00to 1y ago
  > I don’t understand […] They’re willfully ignoring the facts and indulging in emotional projection. Domestic cats aren’t wild animals, they’re pets. Letting them roam outdoors is irresponsible both to local ecosystems and to the cats themselves. Many dogs will run right out the door if left to their own devices, but somehow this is not ok while the same behavior for cats is. Very strange.
  - whycome 1y ago
    I think they're pointing out also that humans themselves are an invasive species. They've killed wildlife and converted fertile land to monocultures. Letting humans roam outdoors tends to be irresponsible to local ecosystems.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    > Many dogs will run right out the door if left to their own devices, but somehow this is not ok while the same behavior for cats is. That's not at all difficult to explain. The dog is a nuisance to the nearby humans.
    - dmonitor 1y ago
      Nobody cares about their pets being a nuisance. They care because dogs are more likely to get lost and not find their way home or get hit by a car.
- 827a 1y ago
  Realistically, in much of the US both urban and rural, cats are as much a part of the wildlife as whatever animal purists actually want to call wildlife. You can spay, neuter, domesticate, and indoor them as much as humans are capable of doing; but they breed like, well, cats, and they deeply want the freedom of being outside. Most modern dogs would not survive if humans didn't intervene in their survival; but the vast majority of cats would. Humans don't generally actively participate in inciting cat breeding like we do with dogs; in fact, we try to stop it as much as we can. What you're describing is just... nature. Its harsh, its brutal, but cats are a very natural part of our ecosystem. Even the term "domesticated cat" is a partial, minor misnomer [1]. They aren't really domesticated in the same way dogs are. They're wild animals, who's wild behavior just happens to be kinda chill and mesh well with humans. Cats do live longer when you keep them inside. Humans would also live longer if we kept them in a prison for their entire life, feeding them a nutritionally perfect slurry. Not sure why its relevant to the discussion. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian-are-cats-domesticated-180955111/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-s...
- bpodgursky 1y ago
  You could try thinking about it. Buying cat food at the store isn't magic. It comes from somewhere. Cats can eat the wildlife in your yard. Or, you could have wildlife in your yard, and offset the calories by growing them on more farmland somewhere else. The only difference in the second scenario is that you don't see the extra acre of woods — along with all the lizards and birds that would live there — getting turned into soybeans.
  - sosborn 1y ago
    "Feral Cats are wild-living variant of the common pet cat, introduced to Hawai‘i by Europeans. Feral cats have established populations on all eight of the main Hawaiian Islands and contribute to widespread ecological disruptions that threaten native Hawaiian wildlife. Feral cats are one of the most devastating predators of Hawai‘i’s unique wildlife. In addition to direct predation, feral cats also spread a potentially lethal parasite (Toxoplasma gondii) that contaminates terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments and has been shown to negatively impact birds and mammals – including humans." https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/feral-cats/ https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/...
  - noelwelsh 1y ago
    Most pet food is made from waste from producing human food. E.g. offal. So I'm not sure pet food accounts for any significant loss of wild land on its own.

southernplaces7 1y ago

This gets trotted right out every time someone mentions their cat being let outside, as if it were some sort of awful sin and thus makes the cat's owner totally wrong in any worry or complaint they have about their cat's safety outdoors. It's ridiculous, particularly when there's a very easy solution to cats hunting local birds: a collar with a little bell. It's nearly guaranteed to ruin their hunting. That aside, you yourself, as a human, are an invasive species that kills tons of animals indirectly through your habits each year, should you thus be enclosed 24 hours a day? Cats killing off random birds. The ship of human intervention in the ecosystem has long since sailed, and blaming cat owners for a relatively tiny part of it is an absurdity in badly applied blame.

dmonitor 1y ago
You're allowed to let your cat outside and kill nature, but you aren't allowed to be mad when nature fights back. The double standard with which people treat feral dogs/cats (treating kill shelters for overpopulation as an awful sin) versus how they treat snakes and alligators (go into the woods and kill them on sight just for existing) makes me nauseous.
- southernplaces7 1y ago
  >You're allowed to let your cat outside and kill nature, but you aren't allowed to be mad when nature fights back. Feel free to smugly tell me that same thing whenever some animal or human you love is killed off by some element of nature. Its also hypocritical: Your comfortable, modern existence is absolutely, wholly the product of a colossal bending and crushing of nature to human will that let you sit at a laptop or on your phone and complain about people who simply recognize this practical reality in a more direct and basic context. Also, I have no problem with culling feral cats and dogs if their populations can't also be controlled with more humane things like sterilization campaigns. Why let them starve and suffer pointlessly?
chomp 1y ago
Bad take. Letting your cat experience nature means you need to be ok with nature experiencing your cat.

Tade0 1y ago

You can always walk your cat on a leash. It's a unique experience and very different from walking a dog. My SO would occasionally unleash our cat and run alongside it.

trhway 1y ago

>Probably best to keep your cats inside even if you do get another one, considering the devastating effect they have as an invasive species on local wildlife. [1] >[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 You're posting an article by the Smithsonian department employing that felon convicted for animal cruelty toward cats. Wrt. the article itself - it has pretty much no scientific merits as, not surprisingly given the authors' agenda, the article has an obvious fundamental flaw disqualifying it from science - it doesn't specify how many of that wildlife killed by cats were old/ill who would be anyway killed by other predators if it were a natural setting and not a developed area where the only predators left are cats. If we to believe the article's total numbers then it would really mean what the cats are just doing the job of other predators pushed out by humans. Killing the old/ill birds, reptiles, mammals by predators is good for those birds, reptiles, mammals species. (and around humans say an old/ill bird not killed by cats would become a dead bird and a food for rats or something like this)

jhide 1y ago
You’re just stating a trait of animal predation. Predation often eliminates the weakest animals in a population. The point is that invasive species by definition of invasive predate in a way that their prey has not had adequate evolutionary space to adapt to because they are introduced. All the words in that sentence have precise definitions in ecology and I don’t think we share the same framework or definitions
- trhway 1y ago
  name natural predators supposed to kill all those birds and mammals around humans.