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I feel similarly about cats. I absolutely love cats but I didn’t have one for five years because I refuse to own one in an apartment. It seems like people tortu
by justonceokay 7mo ago
I feel similarly about cats. I absolutely love cats but I didn’t have one for five years because I refuse to own one in an apartment. It seems like people torture animals to make sure that they have some attention when they get home
- deaddodo 7mo agoA decently sized apartment is fine for most cats, psychologically. I don't know where you get "torture" from. What's most important is stimuli such as scratching posts, toys, etc. Otherwise, they're insanely copacetic to the point many "house" cats don't want to leave the home even when being dragged out. Now, putting a dog in an apartment, especially when you're unable to give them constant exercise and attention. That's bordering on cruel. That all being said, every animal has it's own personality. So it's best to match them with an environment that fits their personal needs.
- justonceokay 7mo agoIf you’ve ever had a cat that is adamant about trying to escape you might feel differently.
- appletrotter 7mo ago> That all being said, every animal has it's own personality. So it's best to match them with an environment that fits their personal needs.
- kjkjadksj 7mo agoYeah like “back up from door” not “poor baby just wants to be free.”
- atmosx 7mo agoHave you? I never came across a cat that prefers rain and cold over dry and cold (and pillows and food). But the most cats in houses or apartments I have seen come in and out as they please through specially built doors in roofs, doors or windows.
- dameyawn 7mo ago> A decently sized apartment is fine for most cats, psychologically. And how do you objectively come to this conclusion? Could you say a human prisoner can learn to cope in a prison and present "psychologically" well, but it still feel like a form of torture?
- deaddodo 7mo agoModern house cats are semi-mostly domesticated. They are accustomed to house life and communal company as much as humans are. Same goes for domesticated canines. Your entire comment screams of a PETA ad warning about cruelty to ferrets without realizing that domesticated ferrets literally can and will not survive in nature in 99% of cases. Their "wild" instincts are gone. Cats aren't nearly as helpless, but are similarly co-evolved to domestic life.
- a_t48 7mo agoWhat difference would a house make here? A yard?
- soopypoos 7mo agocats hate stairs
- theultdev 7mo agoI've had cats that love stairs. They'd play and slide down them on purpose. Pretty sure cats love climbing things, and stairs are no different.
- data-ottawa 7mo agoI lived in apartments for a long time then moved into a house. I thought my cat who had never seen stairs would take some adjusting. Nope, he look up them, wiggled his butt, then ran full tilt to the top. Ran full tilt down them too. One of our cats has arthritis and before we got her treatment she didn’t like them, but she’s perfectly happy now.
- saltyoldman 7mo agoso you probably never had cats that run up and down stairs 10 times at 6am.
- akramachamarei 7mo agoCarpetedness may make a big difference in this case.
- justonceokay 7mo agoI have a 3-story ADU (yeah, it’s weird) with access to a forested area behind. One day Seven of Nine might be eaten by a raccoon but I’ve seen the GoPro footage, she has a blast every day of her life. As a side-effect benefit, she doesn’t play games with me because her entire world is filled with games she can play herself. We still sleep curled up together though :)
- soopypoos 7mo agoBut then you did get one?
- nothrowaways 7mo agoYes. After buying a house with a yard, a pool, and a few trees.
- kjkjadksj 7mo agoApartment is no good for a cat but suddenly fine for you? It isn’t like it is in human nature to live in a shoebox either. Human nature is to live in the sahel, sleep under the stars, forage, and track game. The office and the apartment is genuinely a prison for the human in their evolved element.
- justonceokay 7mo agoYes but I can leave whenever I want.
- kjkjadksj 7mo agoCan you? Leave in the middle of every work meeting next month and see what happens.
- justonceokay 7mo agoYou are not arguing in good faith. A work meeting is a commitment I made of my own volition and is only possible because I /can/ leave my apartment. I’ll throw it back at you, maybe if you left that meeting you would find that it had less consequences than you are imagining.
- kjkjadksj 7mo agoThe only one who is arguing in bad faith are the ones equating a cat chilling in an apartment to some form of slavery.
- nandomrumber 7mo agoHow do you go sleeping under the stars when it’s below zero, blowing its guts out, and snowing.
- kjkjadksj 7mo agoLook at how much hair is on your skin, you aren’t meant for that. You are meant to persistent hunt game and forage in fairer weather. You are optimized for that. Everything else is compromised, swimming uphill only bailed out by happenstance technological affordance.
- make3 7mo agoit's funny because domesticated cats have much more developed frontal cortexes than their ancestors & it would be one of the things that feral cats lose to genetic drift (meaning, no conservation pressure in the wild). whatever boring stuff we have them do is apparently extremely mentally taxing compared to the wild.
- SoftTalker 7mo agoSocial interaction may take more mental capacity than hunting and surviving?
- make3 7mo agothey also need to understand human behavior a little bit I guess, & that's pretty complicated (so not just social, social of humans specifically)
- soopypoos 7mo ago"Your Pet Cat Has a Smaller Brain Than Its Wild Ancestors" https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cat-brains-have-shrunk-with-domestication-180979516/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cat-brains-have-sh...
- nandomrumber 7mo agomore developed frontal cortexes And smaller brains Aren’t mutually exclusive
- soopypoos 7mo agoYeah it probably shrank as it developed
- CalRobert 7mo agoIt’s for the best, house cats torture the birds and frogs around here and I hate it. I never knew frogs could scream.
- justonceokay 7mo agoLife sucks. I bet the 10s of 1000s of animals used to source the protein in your cat food had a great life though
- CalRobert 7mo agoThey eat crickets funny enough. Anallergic. And as animal production goes the crickets seem happy enough.
- card_zero 7mo agoThere was a prize-winning photo of a lynx doing that to a rat, a few days ago. https://petapixel.com/2026/03/24/wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-peoples-choice-award-2026/ https://petapixel.com/2026/03/24/wildlife-photographer-of-th... Then further down the page, "A sika deer carries the interlocked severed head of a rival male that had died after their battle". Nature, eh.