Good.
Australian with three cats here - they’re all indoor and happy about it because i’m not a shitarse pet owner. An outdoor cat in Australia is ecological genocide
From the cats perspective I think it’s quite uncontroversial to say they’d be happier roaming free.
EDIT: I’d really love to hear the argument for why a cat actually prefers to live its enitire life indoors, despite this being something we’ve only done to them for the past few decades or so.
I mean even if they would rather be outside, they live longer inside, they are healthier and they would have better deads
We’ve selected for traits that make some of them only really suitable at being indoor companions or mouse hunters.
Hairless cats for just one instance.
These aren’t wild animals.
I could literally leave my back door wide open and Cerys would not step foot out it. She hates the outdoors. Punkin’s stuck his nose out a few times, but it holds no real interest for him and Misha - who was an abandoned cat that literally decided to move in with us and has lived an extensive part of her life as an in-out cat could not give a shit about going outside.
Needs are met - food, safety, security and entertainment - they’re very happy.
But all of that is downright irrelevant. We are talking about an introduced species that wreaks unimaginable ecological damage if left to its own devices. Why the almighty fuck would a cat’s fee-fees override that? Not to mention the cat safety issues. I mean i’m sure punkin would be ‘happier’ with his balls intact merrily raping and impregnating his sister and mother but that shit ain’t happening either.
Good, should be enforced world wide.
Good luck getting the UK on board, something like 90% of cats are outdoor cats here
Domestic cats have been in the UK for ~2000 years, and wildcats for >~8000 years.
Their only real predators in the UK are cars and dogs, and most British bird species are well acquainted with cats, and on the whole aren’t at high risk. Recommendations say an outdoor cat is a healthy, happy cat.
The RSPB (bird conservation charity) doesn’t find them a major problem here, but do recommend:
- Neuter them
- Keep them in at dawn, dusk & night
- If they ever kill a bird, put a bell or beeper on the collar
Which seems a reasonable set of recommendations.
On the other hand, the USA and Australia don’t have the thousands of years of history of cats as part of the ecosystem, and they have all these wild dog-type-things and snappy reptile things etc, so the cats are in more danger, and the native bird species are at higher risk. Recommendations say an outdoor cat is a bird-murdering machine that’s about to get run over by a giant SUV and then eaten by drop-bears.
My Eastern European neighbours think it’s weird that we let the cats inside at all. They think they should live entirely outside.
So I guess “different countries, different rules”.
More than countries, different ecosystems different rules. Mainland USA and Hawaii have different ecological rules for good reason.
Along with mandatory spay/neuter. Make it a crime to intentionally avoid spaying and neutering cats and dogs.
Oh, you’re a breeder? I used to work at a no kill animal shelter. You’re the bane of my, and every stray animal’s, existence. FUCK animal breeders.
I mean, if such a campaign is ever completely successful, along with one for capturing or fixing stray and feral animals, there would need to be some amount of breeding of them or they’d eventually go extinct. Perhaps with regulation on both practices that lead to unnecessary health problems (like inbreeding or breeding for harmful traits like squashed faces) and on numbers to avoid breeding more of a specific sort of animal than there exists demand for.
Maybe add a safeguard to it, so that when local animal shelters are at 10% capacity the regulation is temporarily lifted or something. Realistically, it would never be totally successful anyway.
Are you confusing ‘breeder’ with ‘pet mill’? Ghetto breeding was horrible to my family involved in animal care and salvation. Actual breeders, though, not so much.
I’m talking about anyone who intentionally takes an unneutered male animal and an unspayed female animal and intentionally puts them together to make and sell babies. Especially inbreeders. The only purebred animal that I can accept is sheepdogs, because they aren’t bred for looks, they’re bred for intelligence.
Not everywhere are cats a problem.
They are literally native to Africa and parts of Asia. In most of Europe they have been held for thousands of years and are not a threat to the ecosystems.
Taking Countries with invasive species as a global role model makes no sense.
Both domesticated and feral cats — like the one pictured above in New York — pose a threat to Australia’s biodiversity, experts say.
I know what they meant by this, but I still find it amusing that a cat in New York could pose a threat to Australia’s biodiversity.
Well you see, since its owner doesn’t properly watch it, it likes to travel. It even travels to Australia to go hunting.
