this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Freeroaming house cats successfully kill approximately 2 small game animals a week. That's a 104 kills a year, 1560 kills in a lifetime of 15 years. Lets say they stay indoors during their kitten year. With 90 million pet cats in the US that'd be a killrate of 90 000 000 000 small game animals a year, if they were all allowed outside.
Does it really need to be researched and peer reviewed before the fact that your cat, allowed outside, will be an invasive species that will kill small game animals that wouldn't otherwise have been killed, and that that is one of many reasons to keep it indoors?
Yes, if there are few enough, the impact won't be consequential, but humans making decisions assuming such things is why our streets are covered in cigarette butts and why we have to have trash cans along forest trails.
Even if the situation in the UK is fine, just that idea in itself can cause things to quickly become not fine, as a thousand people can each think to themself "one more cat won't be a problem" while together adding a thousand cats to the environment, not one.