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.
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.
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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!
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.
Maybe I’m wrong
You totally are, but at least now you know
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.
They don’t if you exercise a modicum of responsibility and actually make the environment one that meets their needs
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.
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.
I didn’t realise this was so controversial. All we need now is some hexbear user to stumble across this thread and instigate a mass pile-on (luckily they’ve decided not to federate with us anymore so we should be safe).
If anyone does notice the conversation get a bit out of hand please report it and we’ll deal with it accordingly
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
That is definitely a fair call, locking it now.
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Yeah cool, here’s one good thing we can do to make a positive change but fuck doing it because of the other, completely unrelated thing, right?
It’s why I use Linux…
We need to genetically modify cats to only hunt rats.
Good news, they also kill native bush rats!
… Wait that’s bad news.
"We need to genetically modify cats to only hunt introduced rats. " In my area foxes were hunting outdoor cats, so you hardly ever see one. Foxes got baited, and now cats are everywhere. Q is, what is better.
Foxes are also introduced, so I’d say cats everywhere are “better” because there’s half a chance their numbers can be reduced through requirements for owners to contain them.
Also, cats can be baited too if required. And, IMO, it is at the point where it’s required.
The discussion here has gone a bit off the rails, and it’s reached the point where discussion is no longer meaningful. As such I am locking this thread. If you believe you have something meaningful to contribute to the broader discussion create a new post.
The laws of physics.
