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Don’t let your cats be outdoor cats. It seriously harms local bird populations. Cats are murderous little shits.
Make a little fully-fenced-in area if you think they need to be outside.
Fully enclosed, like a catio. Fences are often nothing to cats.
Right, I couldn’t remember the word “catio.”
IDK if it’s even a real word, just a portmanteau that has become common.
Thor: “All words are made up”.
I made a catio in my backyard (3rd one attached the house) because our little bastards will kill everything in a kilometre radius. Not that we’ve ever tested that, but we’ve seen how they act when creatures smaller then them are out and about within their purview.
Missed opportunity…purrview.
So do they have free access or do they have to be carried in and out? That’s a very cool catio. And fwiw…thanks from a stranger for keeping a few more murdermittens from killing random critters.
Beyond the bird or wildlife problem, outdoor free roaming cats are just generally a problem. I have two cats and an outdoor cat likes to come and taunt them at the window: it seriously stresses them out. It’ll go so far as climbing up screens and damaging them. Cats will also often mark people’s houses.
I walk my cats on leashes. I don’t understand why cat owners can’t understand that people don’t want their cat around unmanaged.
It’s bad for the cats too since the likelihood of getting sick, hurt or dying in an accident, fight, whatever is much higher. Some work from a gut feeling that letting them roam freely is better for them because it’s more natural, but I don’t think that’s supported by the studies in the same way that the likelihood of them getting hurt from roaming freely is.
Agreed.
Also it being more natural is irrelevant. They aren’t wild animals. They’re pets. They’re much better fed than anything they’d compete with, so they aren’t having to worry about being sparing with their caloric expenditure. That’s also not natural.
Get a catio, don’t let your cat roam wild.
Cats kill huge numbers of birds. Most small bird species have high reproduction rates, and crowding results in higher death rates from increased disease and parasite spread, competition for food, and all the good shelter from predators being taken. Higher death rates from one cause (say, cats) results in less death rates from crowding-related causes. I haven’t seen any evidence that, in general, cat hunting ends up actually impacting bird populations.
Specific species of birds in certain locations have been harmed by cats: the Wikipedia page list several examples in Australia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife). So it’s good to have local awareness if there’s a particular vulnerable population. But in general, keeping cats inside is only for their own safety and won’t impact bird population one way or another.
The fact that several species in Australia are now extinct kinda shows cats do harm bird populations. Cats are usually an invasive species and hundreds of them in an area can decimate local wildlife. Overcrowding only kill birds when there are too many, while cats will always kill birds. There are definitely places where it matters more, like on small islands, but in general any invasive species can massively shift ecosystems.
I’m going to remember this argument for the velociraptors released into human populations 😂
Velociraptors kill huge numbers of humans. Most human species have high reproduction rates, and crowding results in higher death rates from increased disease and parasite spread, competition for food, and all the good shelter from predators being taken. Higher death rates from one cause (say, velociraptors) results in less death rates from crowding-related causes. I haven’t seen any evidence that, in general, velociraptor hunting ends up actually impacting human populations.
Specific species of humans in certain locations have been harmed by velociraptors: the Wikipedia page list several examples in Jurassic Park (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park). So it’s good to have local awareness if there’s a particular vulnerable population. But in general, keeping velociraptors inside is only for their own safety and won’t impact human population one way or another.
Well velociraptors were actually tiny so woukdnt pose much threat if any to human populations.
You shared a Wikipedia link with sources[1] (and also numerous sections and assertions in the Wikipedia article itself) showing that cats generally impact wildlife populations but came to the conclusion that they don’t. Am I missing something here? Is it because you’re specifically focusing on birds?
[1] https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2656.13745
5 CONCLUSIONS
Free-roaming domestic cats affect wildlife through predation, disease, hybridization, and indirect fear and competition effects. Our review highlights biases and gaps in the global literature on these impacts, including a focus on oceanic islands, Australia, Europe and North America, and on rural areas, predation, impacts of unowned cats, and impacts at population and species levels. Key research advances needed to better understand cat impacts include more studies in underrepresented regions (Africa, Asia, South America), on impacts other than predation, and on management methods designed to reduce impacts. This review also supports past studies in illustrating that cats negatively affect wildlife populations and communities in most cases in which these potential impacts were evaluated
When I was younger our indoor/outdoor (declawed) cats were suddenly gaining a lot of weight starting every spring and slimming down through the winter. We put the cats on a special diet, monitored how much food they got, forbid giving scraps at dinner or while snacking. After a year of this and it finally seeming to work through the winter, regular vet check up revealed one fat gained almost 2 pounds in a month since spring.
As we were bringing the cat home we ran into our neighbor, who asked where we caught the cat. We informed him she was our cat, and had been for 6 years. He had a eureka moment “So that’s where that cat comes from!” Before laughing through an explanation of how he thought his daughters brought home a cat after being told no because every afternoon the cat was on their deck waiting for the girls to come out. Turns out once weather was good enough to sunbathe outside, the girls would take some meat and cheese out to the back deck and our cats came over to investigate, leading to the tradition of the neighbor girls constantly feeding our cats through the spring and summer, the cats only losing weight in the winter cause it was too cold to be out on the deck.
Such a lovely story 🧡
Apart from the declawed bit :/
And the whole letting cats roam freely outdoors bit. But other than that yeah, nice story.
What’s wrong with that? My first cat was allowed in and out whenever he wanted. It’s not a flawless system but it has some merits. Why should a cat be locked up like a prisoner?
It’s like the old saying: if you love someone, set them free. If they come back, they’re yours.
That said, our current cat does stay home 24/7. This was a conscious decision before we got her (less worries, less fleas), but she turns out to be such a scaredy-cat that she would never leave the house even if given the choice. I’ve tried to let her a few times as an experiment. Even when we just have some guests over - whom she has already met, and who come regularly enough - she still hides under the bed.
Basically it depends on the cat. Some cats live their best lives when allowed both indoors and outdoors.
Well, unless you live in Africa, they’re an invasive species. Cats hunt and attack wildlife regardless of whether or not they are hungry, which was great for humans looking to keep mice out of the granary but not so great for songbirds in the modern era. They do immense harm to bird populations in general, but even if you don’t care about that, why would you let it:
Contract FIV
Get into fights with other animals or cats
Get hit by a car
Get ticks and other parasites
Eat poisonous plants or animals
Get wounded or eaten by predatorsWhen on the other hand you could just keep it inside and make sure it has enrichment. If your cat really is miserable without the outdoors, catios are a thing. Cats are pets, not prisoners, and as animals that are not native to the majority of the places they end up in, they are dependent on their humans to keep them safe and out of nature’s way.
To add to the other comment just to drive home how bad they are:
This chart is about human-related bird deaths.
(Also keep in mind if you just look at the lines, its even worse than it looks at a glance because the values are separated strangely. Like 10/25/50 million all being equally spaced out, and 600 being the halfway point of 0 and 2400.)
