Keeping cats indoors is a rare solution where everybody wins | Calla Wahlquist
www.theguardian.com
In the debate over protecting native wildlife from domestic felines, one thing is often overlooked: cats should be kept indoors for the sake of cats

I am not here to make the case that cats should be kept indoors for the sake of local wildlife – that case has been made over and over and over and over again. Cat owners know these arguments, and if they have not been persuaded by the fact that cats kill more than 6 million native animals in Australia a day they will not be persuaded by me.

There is a fairly tedious assumption that if you love wildlife you must hate cats, and visa versa. And nothing will turn cat people off faster than encountering a person who hates cats.

I understand this. I also hate people who hate cats. So let’s set the birds and the bettongs to one side for the moment, and consider the other, obvious fact: cats should be kept indoors for the sake of cats.

  • Ilandar
    422·
    1 year ago

    Yes, I think a balance is best. There is absolutely no reason why a cat can’t experience the outdoors during daylight under supervision of their owner. They should also be freely allowed to go outside at night, as long as they are limited to a cage type structure connected to the house.

    Anyone keeping them permanently locked inside without any plan to change that really has no business owning one in the first place. The “b-b-but they live longer!!!” argument people use to justify this is also disingenuous. People pretend it’s some blanket truth, when in reality it depends entirely on what the cat is doing outdoors.

    • JonsJava@lemmy.world
      52·
      1 year ago

      I’ll just harness my cat up, and take them for a brief morning drag…

      I get what you’re saying, but you’re just wrong. In my unscientific and anecdotal-driven opinion, there are too many cats outside as-is. They upset ecosystems. If you don’t have the space for a cat to wander inside, you shouldn’t be adopting a cat.

      • Ilandar
        37·
        1 year ago

        This is just more bad faith, binary arguing. Why do cats upset ecosystems? What are the actual problems we are talking about here? Pretending cats just magically cause damage the second they step outside is stupid.

        My family has two cats. They are trained to come when called. They have an enclosure they can sit in without supervision at any time, day or night, if they want to be outside. If family members are outside during the day and not preoccupied with something else, the cats are also allowed to join them. If they begin to exhibit behaviour consistent with hunting, we intervene. We pay attention to the native animals in our backyard and work around their nesting cycles. Our cats get to experience the outdoors and our garden is absolutely thriving with small birds and reptiles.

        In short, we actually put time and effort into the well-being of both our pets and the native animals they share our property with, instead of just moral grandstanding on social media about how we are “responsible pet owners” while doing absolutely nothing to back that up.