Broader adoption of keeping cats safe at home would have large benefits for cat welfare, human health, local wildlife and even the economy. So, should cat owners be required to keep their pets contained to their property?
The answer to the question is obviously “yes”.
Selfishness
The factual answer
@trk @TassieTosser Knox City Council in outer-eastern Melbourne did exactly this: https://www.knox.vic.gov.au/whats-happening/news/keeping-your-cats-safe-and-secured .
The council did it because some of its suburbs (The Basin, Ferntree Gully, Upper Ferntree Gully, parts of Boronia, Lysterfield) border national parks and the Dandenong Ranges.
Younger cats can adapt to living indoors.
But the challenge was with older cats, who are used to roaming around.
The happy medium would be to phase it in over five to 10 years, where any new cats registered or adopted after a particular date have to stay indoors, but older cats can continue to roam.
That’s 5-10 years in which it’s really hard to enforce though, as you can’t just have some cat trapping and taking to the pound program. So people would still let them outside you’d have the same problem at the end of your phase out period
Don’t forget laziness.
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There’s a quote in the body of the post that ends with
So, should cat owners be required to keep their pets contained to their property?
On desktop you get a preview of the article, which I’ve now included in the heading since I’m guessing it doesn’t display on mobile / in apps.
It displays on Boost
Haha, I saw it the same way at first!
Benefits for cats: No FIV infections, no car injuries, safe temperatures, no fights, no parasites.
Benefits for wildlife: no murder, fewer vectors, no loss of habitat to cats
Benefits for community: no roaming cats triggering sensor lights/setting off other pets/damaging property with claws, no toxo transmission, no digging up poo while gardening/losing plants to cat piss
Cons to cats: Keepers must provide entertainment
Cons to keepers: Exercise the level of basic responsibility every other keeper of pets is expected to, or parent with children.
Issue: Controversial???
Super controversial. I know plenty of people that are against pets indoors altogether.
Went to a vet specialised in behaviour to help with one of my cats. She insisted that I should let them out.
I guess you’re not able to care for cats then?
why is their mood worth more than all the wildlife they kill or terrorise?
I never said I was one of those people. I keep my cats indoors. And their mood is fine. One of them won’t leave even if I leave the door open. Takes a few steps outside and chills there.
well there you go, someone was wrong about what cats need to be happy.
You’d think a vet would be more worried about all the heal problems they pick up outside but I suppose it’s more work for them if mr fluffypaws needs surgery or whatever.
Try to keep non de-sexed cat indoor. I tried, no way it can work. In the end poor boy lost his balls.
Try to keep non de-sexed cat
I’mma stop you right there. No, don’t do that.
Balls vs literally thousands of wildlife. What a hard decision?
Letting a desexed cat roam is literally hatred for this land. Do you want more feral cats? desex pets, it’s again basic responsibility.
I think this is the the thread with the highest ratio of downvoted top level comments to upvotes ones I’ve ever seen on Lemmy
It’s always a controversial topic and rarely has any level of insightful or genuine discussion. Best to avoid unless your idea of living is engaging in meaningless social media pile-ons or rage-baiting.
Ah I’m just here for the drama, so it suits me just fine
Jokes aside, it did surprise me a bit. Considering Lemmy tends to be quite left leaning and big into climate activism and stuff of that nature, I really didn’t expect there to be this many people who disagree with the OP. I’ve never really seen more than 1 comment per thread that goes against the common opinion
Also I wasn’t going to say this before, but the extremely aggressive and toxic nature of the indoor cat crowd usually doesn’t help sway neutrals to their side, either. Like in this thread you have someone sharing a link to a study and trying to expand on their counterargument and the OP just called them a “selfish piece of shit” and didn’t attempt to engage in a discussion at all. If you think the study is being misrepresented or has flaws, you have the option of explaining that in more detail. Alternatively, if you think the argument is being put forward in bad faith you can just ignore it. Instead people always seem to get mad and start calling each other names, regardless of the social media platform. It feels like a lot of conversations online these days are just one misunderstanding or disagreement away from devolving into full monkey brain tribal warfare.
“selfish piece of shit”
give me a decent explanation for letting your animals decimate the wildlife and I’ll consider it. Otherwise…
The internet loves cats. People also only care about the environment for as long as it has nothing to do with their personal life. That’s why everyone gets very upset when it’s suggested that they need to drive less or reduce their meat consumption. I have frequently seen fatalist comments here suggesting we shouldn’t change our lifestyles at all because anthropogenic global warming is primarily being driven by big companies and we are therefore freed of any responsibility as individuals.
People also only care about the environment for as long as it has nothing to do with their personal life
Plane travel i think is Australian’s biggest problem on this. I once had a friend spitting daggers at me for suggesting the amount of waste caused by travelling to a place like Europe every year needs to be stopped (read: trips spaced out further) until we access a different less carbon intensive transport.
I thought the point i’s making was really, really moderate considering the impacts, but my friend turned on me like i’d just insulted their mothers favourite budgie.
It was a surreal moment.
Must be nice to have the means to travel to Europe every year lol
Haha, i might have been embellished that a bit.
there’s nothing logically controversial, it’s cat owners who can’t be bothered to care properly for their responsibilities. If you take a pet, it’s your responsibility. If you let that outside to murder the wildlife, it’s incompetence and malice. Cat owners just don’t want to take responsibility.
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Oh, it’s only now that you mention it I realise I haven’t seen any hexbears in a while.
I’d probably have locked this thread by now if I were a mod tbh. Although I don’t really like threads being locked, it doesn’t look like there’s much actual discussion happening. To me, it looks more like everybody on both sides is screaming their opinions as loud as they possibly can and trying to 1 up the other side
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Toronto suburb I lived in had a no outdoor cats rule. Massive changes uears later, all the way up to increases in rabbits, deer, and coyotes.
The same whiny toddler tanties that come from people who think being told what to do is the end of the universe.
Like putting away phones and iPads while the plane is taking off
What’s stopping us?
Assholes. Selfish assholes. Here in the US, one of my neighbors cats was killed by a coyote last week, it got the cat because it was out in the neighborhood. the results were horrific (like, they kept finding pieces of it around the neighborhood).
KEEP YOUR FUCKING PETS INSIDE YOUR GODDAMN HOUSES PEOPLE.
Said neighbor still lets their other cats roam. fucking twats.
Nothing. My cat is indoors 24/7.
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In my neighbourhood in the city, there’s some people who take their cat out in the park on a leash. I’ve done it myself. Though I also let one out on his own. He got spooked by a reindeer and then stayed inside for a whole day lol
Mainly they were indoor cats though. I don’t think mine killed anything
Walking your cat on a leash is pretty common here. I can’t even remember when I last saw a cat just roaming freely.
How much is a container of litter nowadays?
They go out because my mom is a pushover.
Funny Australians complaining about cats. Fix your fucking spiders first!
Us?!
I’ve always assumed that a cat would go nuts stuck inside all the time. Maybe I’m wrong but I imagine that most people would view it as cruel.
Cats go nuts at the witching hour anyway, being inside or outside has nothing to do with it.
Basically, nah, they’re alright inside. They sleep for between 12 to 18 hours a day and get most active at dawn and dusk, so having some way for them to burn off energy with a good cat tree or the like will keep them occupied. And if they want more than that, they will come to you and make their demands known. And if that’s still not enough and you’re willing to put the effort in and do some acclimatising, you could get a second cat and they’ll keep each other occupied.
I have two cats, they have never been let outside and they’ve been completely happy. Granted the house is a decent size and we have a lot of things to keep them entertained, but that responsibility comes with the ownership I figure.
Maybe I’m wrong
You totally are, but at least now you know
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First of all, anecdotal evidence is not evidence. Second of all, millions of cats are kept indoors 24/7 and they are fine. Thirdly, you need to work with the animal to entertain it, not dump it indoors, ignore it for years and go to work for 8hrs a day.
First of all, anecdotal evidence is evidence, is just rather poor evidence for most arguments.
My dad died last year. My brother took the cat. It used to have basically an entire rural town as his personal playground. (His territory at least doubled in size when dad moved from our large house to the supported housing apartments on the other side of the village, as then the cat just traversed both.)
My brother lives in the city. Definitely can’t allow a cat to be free, especially because he’s not even chipped yet.
To the point, not being able to get outside has stressed him to the point of literally tearing his hair off. Has a bald line on his tail. And no, it’s not about the level of care, he has everything he needs, a large apartment, a scratching complex, with several levels, going from floor to ceiling, 4 or five different levels larger than the average scratching post by itself.
There’s a very nice view from a third floor, he gets to look outside as much as he wants and hears traffic and has an open window.
My brother doesn’t leave him usually for even as long as most people leave their dogs. Very good quality food. Plays with him as much as he wants.
But he gets stressed because he’s never before been limited in such a way. Now it’s getting better, but he definitely wasn’t used to being inside all the time and it definitely was a very stressful change to adapt to.
Domesticated cats don’t much vary in genetics, but in terms of behaviour, some do. To compare to big cats, tigers don’t like captivity as much, and they must have a pool to swim in. Lions on the other hand fucking love lying around and getting fed.
A tiger misses the thrill of the hunt in a nice jungle, a lion is relieved they don’t have to sprint after antelopes in the savannah.
So don’t be pretending it’s as simple ss you make it out.
Yah, uhuh, so much stimulation that the cat is ripping its fur out of frustration. News flash, it’s always the owner.
“I’m not going to accept that I said something so stupid that a third-grader would laugh at it, so I’m gonna say more of equally stupid things, like ‘it’s always the owner’”
How ignorant do you have to be to think that taking an animal, which is used to having several square km as its personal fiefdom, and then limiting it to just one (albeit large and very well equipped) apartment wouldn’t cause stress?
Yes, it causes stress, till they get used to it. It doesn’t cause “rips fur out of frustration” level stress. I know, because I have a cat that was an outdoor cat that went indoors with me. I literally went through it. So yes, it absolutely always is the clueless owner who doesn’t know what they are doing.
It was so damn annoying.
aw. annoying vs. an animal that will kill wildlife when birds are already at enormous risk. huh tough choice buddy. on the one hand, you might be annoyed, oh no. on the other hand we’re looking at collapse of species. hrmm.
well you’ve posited such a great argument… pfft
They don’t if you exercise a modicum of responsibility and actually make the environment one that meets their needs
Nah, they’re fine, especially if they’ve been raised indoors. If you’re cat is already an outdoor cat, they sometimes have trouble adjusting to an indoor-only lifestyle, but there are fencing options that can keep them in your yard as a compromise.
And [Dad voice] what do you get when you assume?
you are wrong with your assumption and your imagination.
Well there you have it dumb dumb.
But seriously I thought cats were like tigers or any other big cat and would prefer an open environment rather than a zoo type setting. At least being able to go outside they get both
If you think it’s cruel to keep a cat inside, don’t get a cat.
Ok, but OP, a random internet stranger, just assured me it’s not cruel. I don’t know who to believe or listen to and thinking for myself is out of the question.
I guess I could get half a cat? That could work
Cats are to tigers as dogs are too wolves. They all would like to roam around freely. We don’t generally want people to let their dogs roam though.
I have a cat and a dog. The dog gets to go out unsupervised for short periods, but he digs so I mostly go outside with him. I take the cat out several times a day and she wishes I’d let her out more. But I don’t want her killing stuff so I make sure she has plenty of toys and entertainment inside too.
That’s because it is cruel.
Large numbers always seem terrifying, because our human minds are not made for them. The only way to comprehend them is to compare them to other things - in this case all the ways we humans cause damage to the environment directly. Our suburbs are ecological dead zones already. There is just not much space left between asphalt roads, driveways, and neatly trimmed lawn. It’s definitely the cat that goes outside for one hour a day who is the problem. Right next to plastic straws.
The real frustrating thing about all this that the companies that exploit our planet to core keep doing their shit (Noooo you cant work from home for your office job, you MUST commute to the city daily, because reasons!) while we fight with our neighbors about things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Cars definitely kill wildlife too - estimation methodologies vary, but I’ve seen estimates saying:
- Vehicles directly kill about 10,000,000 native animals across Australia per annum. That’s not including habitat loss, and doesn’t include insects (birds, reptiles, and mammals only).
- Pet cats kill about 546,000,000 native animals across Australia per annum. I believe that’s using a similar definition excluding insects.
- Feral cats kill about 3,000,000,000 native animals across Australia per annum.
Of course, habit destruction and pollution has a huge impact as well.
But roaming pet cats legitimately are a major part of the problem. It is possible to simultaneously replace lawns with tree cover, and reduce the burden of cats. That could also feed into a comprehensive policy of tackling stray and feral cat populations - something which is made harder in suburbs due to roaming pet cats.
As for whether it is cruel: change is a stressor for cats, so a sudden change from outdoor access to indoor-only could increase stress levels, but that is a one-off transition and there could be ways to manage that (for example, by providing a lot of notice of a change and allowing owners to phase out access, or by having a permit system for indoor and outdoor cats, and allowing renewal of existing permits for specific microchipped cats, but no new outdoor cat permits). Outdoor access / hunting outdoors is a form of enrichment for cats, but not the only one possible. Indoor cats can play with toys, and have owners simulate chasing and hunting activities indoors (for example, with ribbons, small balls, chasing cat treats, and so on) to provide similar enrichment. At the same time, the indoors protect cats from stressful situations like encountering or being mauled by dogs, aggressive cats, foxes, brushtail possums, injuries on the roads, and disease.
Then why add cats to the pressure the local fauna are feeling?
Let’s take what you’re saying about dead zones as true. Somehow birds still come by to visit local bird feeders etc, in spite of how much negative pressure we Hunan’s are causing. Add a well-fed apex predator into the mix, far from its native homelands in Egypt. How is that fair to local flora and fauna?
