Here is my controversial take: if it is true that a cat needs to be let outdoors unsupervised in order to live a happy life full of enrichment, then we should not have pet cats at all.
TW: Discussions of animal death.
Letting a cat wander outside unsupervised is cruel both to local wildlife, but also cruel to the cat.
Letting cats outside is often introducing a non-native species to an ecosystem which has not evolved to deal with cats. How is it any different to us accidentally introducing invasive rats, weasels, and other small predatory mammals into ecosystems? We invest a lot of money into ridding sensitive ecosystems of these invasive species but we turn a blind eye to cats because we selfishly benefit from them being around us, whether it’s because we find them cute or because they provide a practical use for us as mousers.
I’m fed up of my neighbours cats who visit my garden. They poop in my planters where I grow vegetables that I eat, which presents a serious health risk to me. The cats predate the birds who visit my garden, which has exclusively been successful on fledglings and other young birds. So far, it has not been a species that is vulnerable and it’s only common garden birds, but cats will kill indiscriminately and I have heard many horror stories of endangered birds being predated by cats owned by friends-of-friends.
A pigeon couple has been building a nest in a tree in my garden, but this morning I saw it was predated. I found a chewed open egg, and when showing a photo to my ornithologist friend she theorizes it was most likely a cat as the puncture into the egg shell will have been cleaner if it had been a predatory bird. Predation is a natural part of life, but this predation was not by a natural predator which is part of our local ecosystem and thus I am very upset…
But not only that, I believe letting a cat go outdoors unsupervised is cruel to the cat. Cats so often go missing, more often than not killed by cars. In other countries there are dangerous animals who can kill cats. This is not an issue here but I have personally had to dispose of dead cats who turn up in my garden after being run over on the road in front of my house. I don’t think there is any other common pet animal where we so easily expose them to dangers we cannot protect them from.
Just to say, I do not hate cats. I do not blame the cats for pooping in my vegetable beds, or hunting on my property. They are animals only doing what their instincts dictate, and often are doing what we ourselves have taught them when we first domesticated them. Equally, to a degree I struggle to blame some cat owners as people will often argue that keeping a cat inside is cruel, and they do not desire to be cruel to their cats. The intentions are good, and education on this matter is poor.
There is an issue here which needs to be discussed, and the hypocracies we have normalized need to be challenged. For me, I feel that cats either need to be kept indoors if we can verify that this is not cruel to the cat, or we should be required to supervise our cats outdoors like we are supposed to do with dogs, or we should stop having pet cats. Having unsupervised outdoor cats is unacceptable.
Edit: Grammar and adding a TW just to be safe!
I always see folks say that cats being outside is bad, that they’re a non-native invasive species.
So, I got to wondering….exactly where are cats native and non-invasive, but aren’t inside a house?” houses and dwellings for cats didn’t always exist. I don’t need to be explained to as to why cats should be inside, what I don’t understand is the missing logic about them not being outside.
Domestic cats are decended from the African Wildcat so I suppose you could argue cats are native in these areas. They’re also closely related to the Sand Cat and European Wildcat.
So, prey animals in the mainland eurasia region may be better adapted for dealing with domestic cats since they will have evolved along very similar species. I don’t have any evidence to prove this though.
I do not live in the mainland eurasia region which may be why I have so many personal annecdotes of successful cat hunts on the native wildlife in my back garden.
This is the answer I was looking for, thank you.
Cats might not look like much, but they are some of the most successful and prolific hunters on planet earth. And they also kill entirely to keep their skills sharp.
So as you can imagine, combine an instinctual need to kill for sport with an insatiable desire to explore, you’ve got extremely efficient bird death machines that operate in mile-wide radiuses.
Keeping cats from going outdoors just helps to limit needless disruption to a clade of animals that is already extremely sensitive to deforestation and other external factors.
Put a bell on your cats, and the core of the argument kind of vanishes!
A little bit of owner diligence sorts that problem out. Do people always do this? No. But if the argument is “Outdoor cats are bad because they hunt indiscriminately” than that argument is no longer valid and is instead “Cats that don’t have bells are a danger to their environment” no?
Edit: Bells are not a 100% effective solution as pointed out by @Jho@beehaw.org, they reduce cats hunting effectiveness in ~1/2. I was being too sassy, and got carried away.
Cats that have bells are a reduced danger to their environment, but still present a danger nonetheless. Please stop spreading misinformation on my post.
Bells reduce the success of cats when hunting but it does not completely prevent them from being successful when hunting.
Only permissable misinformation that fits your narrative, got it boss! (There’s lots of it in this thread, and some sprinkled into the OP), so it’s kinda awkward to say that now 😬
Bells reduce their effectiveness by about half, so they work.
However, I’ll admit that the way I stated that implied it was a complete solution. Which I have now edited my comment to reflect.
Being willing to be corrected and accept new information is rather important. So I’m hoping that will be reflected.
OP is providing sources for all their information. Disagreeing with it doesn’t make it false.
Thank you for amending your comment.
When I am referring to misinformation, I am solely referring to your original reply to my post which was “Put a bell on your cat. Problem solved.” which I interpreted to mean “Putting a bell on your cat means it will no longer be successful when hunting”. Because for me, the problem is cats being successful at all when hunting. I am not referring to any other of your comments as I have honestly not read them yet.
Yeah, the way I said it was too sassy.
I think I have a heavy bias because I live in a rural area, and only recently moved into town off of a farm where we had fully outside farm car. So to me it’s just normal, but in more dense urban areas the problem escalates.
I have noticed that feral cat colonies seemed more likely be the cause of problems, just out of sheer numbers, based on my time living in a city with cat issues (many years ago). But idk.
In the end, it’s a numbers game. Wild populations of cats around the world don’t hold a candle to the amount of domestic cats. That’s what ends up making it so damaging to wildlife. There’s no shortage of people enabling cat populations either. It’s inevitable when the animals in question are so cherished by humanity. Feral pigs would be another case of domesticated animals ruining habitats and killing wildlife. They are routinely destroyed, and for good reason. With cats, you’re far more likely to see someone feeding a feral population than gunning them down the way hogs are. It’s just the reality of our attachment.
You can’t get rid of cat populations by killing or relocating them anyways…
They will move back in from neighboring areas.
You do catch, spay, neuter and release. This is a fundamental tactic to controlling feral cat populations.
My point was not to cull or relocate cats. My point was that cats have a lot of cultural factors boosting their numbers that other invasive species don’t.