this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
891 points (98.6% liked)
cats
19615 readers
388 users here now
typical internet cats. videos, pics, memes welcome!
rule 1) be kind
other cat communities midwest.social cats
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Don’t let your cats roam, it’s a dick move in so so many ways. Be responsible and keep and eye on your pet on your property, if you don’t think cats are indoor animals, don’t get one
Nah
Outdoor cats have a far shorter life expectancy and damage the local ecosystem. Why don't you care?
Not every place in the world is America, there are many places where cats are native, and dont get driven over as much because all is full of cars, i got mine to specifically damage the sorounding mice ecosystem because having the pest control there every six months is expensive.
"Many Places" umm no, not domesticated house cats.
And if you live in a place with native and wild small felines it's even more important to keep domesticated cats inside since they will compete for food or mix genetics by trying to interbreed and put the native wild population of cats in danger of diseases.
Cats originated in Egypt and spread across the world basically by humans. So unless you're in Egypt, cats aren't native to your ecosystem.
Your right humans spread them as semi wild pets to protect they food stock from rodents but for Europe that where the romans over 2000 year ago, so i would not say that they are a new emerging existencial thread for the eco system here, if that was the case it would have long colapsed lol.
This is completely faulty logic not backed by reality or even a single source.
Here is some further reading:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cats-kill-a-staggering-number-of-species-across-the-world/
Do you think 2,000 years is a long time? About how long do you think extinction events usually take?
This isnt an extinction event caused by a slow climatic change or something, in some places on earth its an invasive species and if you look up how fast/slow they cause damage than its in the range of tens to hundreds, not thousands of years.
Long enough for ecosystems to change, adapt and form as well as for animals to evolve based on their new environment. Considering that there are already rats & cockroaches adapting to pesticides, both birds & pests are most certainly adapting to cats to some degree after the passage of thousands of years.
Obviously there may be a point in restricting cats in more insular habitats such as small islands, but for anybody on a major continent it is rather pointless. Furthermore, cats serve an important purpose in hunting pests that spread alongside humans, primarily rats and mice, both of which can have an even more disastrous effect on local ecosystems.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aam8327
Maybe you missed this link from above:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cats-kill-a-staggering-number-of-species-across-the-world/
What evidence do you have that it doesn't matter save for insular habitats? You're applying logic without having any sort of evidence -- you're spitballing as far as I can tell.
No, I didn't miss it. I responded to the OPs statement regarding the passage of time, highlighting that animals are already adapting and evolving in the face of urban and human-adjacent ecosystems, which cats have always been an integral part of.
There's plenty parts of America that are like that as well. A lot of areas, having an outdoor cat is almost necessary you want an outdoor garden, since otherwise the local rodents will just eat it all.