Australia wants to force cats to stay inside or give them a curfew because they are murdering so many other animals they are a threat to the country's biodiversity
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
Remember folks, adopt, don't shop. Not only is it just significantly more moral, mutts are far less likely to have health issues from inbreeding that will shorten their lives. You get more time with your four legged loved ones
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.
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.
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".
From a UK perspective, it seems unbelievably cruel to keep a cat locked indoors. The hunting instinct is one of a cat's main drives, so to take that away is equivalent to removing sleep or food. I understand the issues around cats and wildlife in other countries, but I think the solution is to just not have domestic cats rather than trying to imprison them.
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.
It's crazy how it's seen as socially acceptable to "adopt" or "rescue" them and then release them to freely roam your neighbourhood as an invasive species.
There are a handful of kitties in our neighborhood and fuck, they make me so nervous any time they're even remotely close to the road. As far as I know they're all housed, and the lady a few doors down to me said, "just tell him to go home and he will!"
If I see him on the wrong side of the road I pick his ass up and put him back in his yard.
My cats stay inside. We've let them out on the deck (supervised) but the rule is if one single toe bean leaves the deck, it's inside time.
Australian cat owner here. owners that aren't responsillble enough to keep their cats inside are deadset dickheads. the most my cat sees of the outside is our backyard when I take her for a walk either leashed up or in my arms, and even then her killer instinct is so obvious as she tracks lizards lying in the garden and such. cats are born hunters. keep them inside
American cat-directed can opener here: re outdoor cats - we have so many of the same dickheads here. We have coyotes on a nearby trail that eat cats all the time, you'd think their owners would care enough to keep them indoors but no such luck.
My cat has taken the time to break me in, he's not going to want to train a new can opener and is happy at home indoors.
Im so mad with people not willing to put down feral cats, the live of a single cat is worth more than the live of the hundreds of wild animals that it will kill in its lifetime? Fucking not, but some people are delusional and only think in the cute cat pics.
They say ignorance is bliss
I see so many missing cat flyers around my neighbourhood it's depressing, and yet people keep letting their cats outside. It's bad from just about every angle I don't understand why people keep doing it.
I'm one of those dickhead cat owners who seemingly can't keep their cat inside. We adopted our cat when he was 3 after spending a lot of time on the street, and ever since taking him in, he'd constantly howl to be let outside. We tried a few methods like an outdoor cat run, but nothing seemed to work.
We've got a GPS collar (and bell) on him and he seems to just stay super local, like within 100 metres of our house.
We've started to gradually transition him inside more but it's tough. We know it's a problem, but really need help getting him to accept inside life.
Growing up we always had outdoor cats and my first cat was outdoors and the more I learned that wasn't great I tried to transition inside after moving house, I figured it would work best alongside of change of scenery and like you described she just howled at the door constantly and stared out of the window.. I gave up after 6 months.
She is ok with being in at night though so at least there's that.
Yes, cats are not innocent, but let’s keep pretending that humans aren’t affecting biodiversity and just blame the cats. Australians are among the worst offenders on biodiversity problems and climate change, so don’t worry… I get it.
Are you saying, that, because a human curfew would be out of proportion, a cat curfew is out of proportion, too?
Human petship is by extension human activity, so curbing anthropogenic influence on biodiversity loss might include blaming human pets and thus cats, when those pets contribute significantly (2B animals/a) to biodiversity loss.
Domesticated cats live long, are well fed and are great hunters.
I think the first step is to identify the full impact of Glysophates and other similarly used pesticides, particularly their roll up impacts, then we can start working on secondary effects like cats.
If you take away the cats, rats and mice will destroy 10x more than cats ever could. See Vancouver BC or Easter Island.
I am suggesting no such thing? What I mean is that humans should start doing other things first, clean up their own shit - first reason that there are so few birds is factory farming - overly aggressive use of pesticides killing off insects, machine harvesting chopping up ground nests, land “purchase” destroying forests and animal trek transit zones. Outdoor cats come only in sight because of the one animal kind that does thrive on this: rodents, especially mice.
There isn't really anything here that would prey on a cat. Australia is pretty harmless comparatively. No bears, no 'big' cats or wolves of any kind. Crocodiles are limited to the tropics and most of Australia is not in the tropics. Nothing like anacondas and cats are too quick for snakes anyway. There are sharks but they pose no threat to cats. For all the press Australia gets about dangerous wildlife it's actually a pretty chill place. The cities are pretty devoid of bugs if you live in a flat or keep your garden litter down, even more devoid of bugs since I was a kid (mostly due to massive logging in regional areas and overdevelopment in urban areas).
I would think cars would probably be cats biggest killer, especially in urban areas.