One lab mix, her human, and various other K9s in our lives. I'm a 24 year old college student and Pepper is my 10 year old part-time fun-police full-time best friend
According to researchers, coordinated critics have mounted a “misinformation campaign designed to purposefully fabricate doubt regarding the harmful impacts of outdoor cats and stymie policies that would remove outdoor cats from the landscape.”
The conflict stems from a groundbreaking study published in 2013 by scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That study evaluated the combined impact of the tens of millions of outdoor cats in the United States. The authors found that roaming outdoor cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year and are the leading source of direct, human-caused mortality to birds in the country. Similar results have since been confirmed in Canada and Australia.
To those of you still in denial about how bad outdoor cats are to wildlife not just in your own countries but globally here’s the cold hard scientific facts stating that you are apart of a movement of uneducated critics spreading misinformation.
Here’s the link to the open-source scientific artificial as well:
Maybe click the actual scientific research and read it before leaving a comment hmmmmm it would have saved you the embarrassment of proving the point of research. Which was that people that criticise keeping cats indoors were found to have zero actual evidence to back up their criticisms, therefore all their claims were based on nonsense or emotions.
Yikes! Think this is a good lesson in clicking links before you comment!
You have not seen ructions in public until you’ve seen me tell a bunch of farmers to keep their barn cats indoors and encourage black snakes to take care of their Rodent probs because at least the snakes don’t spread toxoplasmosis.
Nobody does a ruction like a six foot plus dude who is secretly afraid a five foot snake will casually slither by and be all “sup”
Anyway here is my Chief Rodent Control Officer after taking a tithe of eggs which she does when there’s not enough rodents around
Yeah it’s not too hard to predict how that conversation will go:
You: You know those cats running around your property that won’t let a human touch them if their lives depended on it? You need to bring them all in the house.
Farmer: haha good one. You know they’d freak the hell out, right? Assuming that I could catch them and drag them in in the first place. And how am I supposed to control the rats if all my cats are inside?
I love it when people assume I am not in fact a farmer myself. I’m a shepherd, with sheep. I don’t have barn cats because, among other reasons, cats spread toxoplasmosis. You know what toxo does? Probably not. You’re probably not dependent on small ruminants for any part of your livelihood.
Toxoplasmosis causes abortion in sheep and goats. Every ewe or doe who fails to lamb or kid is lost milk, lost meat, a lost replacement animal in the flock, lost cash from the sale of a new herd sire to someone else. When you have rare breed primitive sheep like I do, each lost pregnancy is also the entire breed slipping closer to the brink of disappearing.
You also appear to be unaware that there are live traps for catching the very feral barn cats - I’m SO glad someone who knows my profession, life, and attendant tools so well chimed in - we also use them to eg trap raccoons, foxes, and possums who are predating small livestock like chickens and rabbits. Incidentally, did you know cats can shed salmonella which can go on to infect your chickens? Why are you raising your own chickens for eggs and meat if you’re just going to get the same salmonella roulette you could get at the grocery store without all the goddamned work?
Chickens will also eat mice and young rats, incidentally. If you’ve got an honest to God adult rat infestation in your barn your husbandry practices are fucked up six ways from Sunday and you need to build better feed containers before you do anything else. The country isn’t the city. We do a lot more mice here.
You could of course also get yourself a nice working terrier and while you’re doing chores let the dog go to town on the rodent population.
Because if you actually have barn cats you can’t get near, they’re serving as a potential reservoir for rabies (which will pass to any mammal including you, including cattle), feline distemper, toxo, salmonella, and a host of parasites starting with coccidia and running out to various worms that don’t much care if they infect a barn cat or, yknow, a pregnant cow worth $2000.
So no, actually, that’s generally not how the conversation goes. But thanks for chiming in, city kid, assuming I was not in fact a working shepherd.
Great!!! Let me preface this by saying I have no issue whatsoever with people who want to keep indoor cats. There’s a hundred and one reasons why a cat should be an indoor friend. This is in direct response to the hundreds of (unbearably US-centric) posts I’ve seen calling people irresponsible for allowing their cats outside, even going so far as to label it animal cruelty.
So this is some tips and advice for preparing your kitty for the outside world, phrased in response to the most common arguments I’ve seen for why you’re apparently a horrible person if you do so.
This is Athena with her “little” sister Luna:
Athy is a four-year old, feral born, hand-reared tri-colour calico. She’s had open access to the outdoors since she was a little over 6mths. That’s important as it covers the first few points.
Cats are vulnerable to predators outside.
Know your environment. Are there large native predators in your area? Then you really should think long and hard about whether you want your pud-pud to be an outdoor cat. The only things Athena has to worry about are foxes and falcons (there’s one fox we see regularly, as he uses our back garden wall as a throughway almost every night). These predators will attack kittens, and we had the misfortune of seeing one killed by a fox near our house one night. A kitten whose owners (it had a collar) should have never allowed it outside, since it looked barely old enough to have been weaned.
Keep your cat indoors until it’s large enough that predators like foxes won’t even consider messing with it. 6mths is a good number and it’s a good one for other reasons too.
They can get pregnant from other domestic/feral/wild cats.
This honestly baffled me the first time I saw someone make this argument. SPAY & NEUTER YOUR PETS!!! Athy’s debut was delayed because she kept coming into heat right before her spaying appointment. We waited until she had it done before even considering letting her out. But that’s not the only baffling argument.
They can get diseases from other cats.
VACCINATE YOUR PETS!!! I honestly can’t believe people who consider themselves animal lovers advocate never letting any cat ever outside over this most fundamental aspect of pet ownership. Full vaccinations are complete at 12wks, in more than enough time for the 6mnth mark.
They can get injured fighting with other cats.
Athy’s had a few run ins with neighbourhood bullies. Cats fight for many reasons, territory, coz one looked at the other funny, even just for shits and giggles. They almost never result in serious injury. It’s posturing and similar to dogs one usually backs down before it goes too far.
They can get hit by a car.
I can get hit by a car. Kids do everyday. Dogs get over fences or pull out of collars/pull the lead from their owner’s hand. Nobody says to not let your kids outside or to never take your dog on a walk. Again; know your environment. If there’s a highway out behind your house then you might wanna keep an indoor cat. If you’re in the middle of nowhere with only a dirt road leading to the house, not so much.
They kill local wildlife.
This is kind of the point. This is why we domesticated them (let them domesticate us) in the first place. This is where these arguments get very US-centric. Cats have been a part of human society and ecosystems in other parts of the world for up to 9,000 years. They’ve been killing local wildlife all that time too. If every cat owner in the Middle-East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and yes even parts of the New World after mere centuries, started keeping their cats indoors there’d be explosions in bird and rodent populations. This in turn would create massive ecological disruption with increased competition for resources, and the spreading of disease, including to humans.
Cats have been living with us for millennia and they’ve been performing an important role in the ecosystems of places around the world for just as long. If you want to keep your cat indoors then I’m all for it. I’ve no experience being an indoor kitty owner, but I can recommend some great resources. Likewise, if you wanna let your cat outdoors, think about it first, do your homework and be responsible. Your biggest concern is the “presents” they bring back that you have to deal with. In Athena’s case this includes mice, birds, and (to this day I’ve no idea how the titchy little thing got it up the wall and in the bathroom window) a whole entire nest.
If there’s hundreds of posts advocating for indoor cats and less for outdoor cats, there may be a reason for that (hint: it’s because it’s safer for a cat to be indoors rather than outdoors, regardless of where it lives).
I just want to state that I don’t want a fight and I’m not calling you a horrible person for letting your cat outdoors, however I’m a girl of science. I like sources. Would you be able to send me some articles backing up your points? I’m of the boat that cats should be indoors or 100% supervised outdoors, and I’d like to share my reasoning (with sources) on why I think so.
Though I live in Canada, I’ve taken the liberty of only using sources/studies done in the UK and other non-North American countries because you said that it is different for outdoor cats elsewhere.
For context, I have a 1 ½ year old cat named Dave, who was born outdoors as a barn cat and has lived an happy indoor life since he was 2 months old. He occasionally gets supervised outdoor time on a leash, but is no longer allowed to free roam.
Cats are vulnerable to predators outside.
You should definitely know your environment and the animals that live in it! Most places in the world do have large predators that can injure or kill a cat, whether you live in an urban or rural area. Like you state, foxes and falcons can definitely kill cats, however they can also kill adult outdoor cats. If your cat gets injured outdoors, it may not be able to escape a predator that it might usually be able to. For a while there was a craze in England about a “cat killer”. It turns out that cats were just getting hit by cars and then eaten by foxes. Your cat may get hit by a car, be too injured to make it home, and eaten by a fox. Not a pleasant way to go.
Even without wildlife, there are often dogs in both urban and rural areas that can kill cats and other free roaming animals. And as much as I like to believe that the human race is inherently good, there are the few bad apples out there who will go out of their way to harm other people’s cats. I’d rather my cat not get shot by a BB gun, lit on fire, or stomped to death.
They can get pregnant from other domestic/feral cats.
OP is 100% right on this one. Spay and neuter your pets! If your cat is not fixed, obviously don’t let it outdoors to make feral cat problems worse and endanger their health.
They can get diseases from other cats/animals.
OP is definitely right on this one! Vaccinate! However I’ll let you in on a secret: if your cat is strictly indoors, you don’t always have to get all the vaccinations. My indoor cat will never come in contact with a feral cat with FIV or other diseases, so the vet said it wasn’t necessary. Now I can save money and spend it on more enrichment for my cat indoors. Win-Win!
Outdoor cats also can sometimes get injuries/infections/illnesses from other sources that you cannot vaccinate for. Parasites, trauma, and scratches from things in their environment can cause damage and hefty vet bills down the road. Parasite and flea preventatives aren’t 100% effective. Yes, many of these things can happen to an indoor cat as well, but the chances are increased when the cat is outdoors. Generally the best way to prevent disease in cats is to make sure they avoid the outdoor risk factors entirely.
Here are some sources on cat illnesses with no vaccine and other health risks to outdoor cats that are rare or impossible for indoor cats to get.
Cats have cool teeth. They are long and narrow, which means that they can make small but deep wounds. This means that when the wound heals, the skin on top closes up and leaves all the bacteria inside. This bacteria can cause some nasty infections and abscesses.
Your cat may be lucky and hasn’t been injured yet, but that doesn’t mean that other people’s more aggressive cats will be as lucky. Cat bite infections can mean many trips to the vet and can even cause some pretty bad nerve damage. Yes, a lot of what cats do when the see each other is posture, but they can and will get into fights. You may have not seen your cat get into a fight before, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, or never will happen.
They can get hit by a car.
Just because humans and other animals get hit by cars every day doesn’t mean you have to add your cat to the mix as well. It seems like you’re implying that since they have a chance to get hit by a car, then there’s no reason to bother trying to prevent it at all. That’s like me saying that my elementary students have a chance to get hit by a car so I may as well let them play road hockey on the highway. Supervising your cat outdoors or keeping it inside will lower the chance of your cat getting hit by a car! I don’t know about you, but I would rather minimize the chances of coming home from work to see my cat dead on the side of the road. If you let kitty free roam, it might get hit. If you keep it on a leash or indoors, it won’t have the option to choose the asphalt as a prime nap spot and get run over.
Again, urban or rural areas still don’t make much of a difference. In fact, I’ve known more rural “single dirt road” cats to get hit than urban ones, because they are less familiar with cars and being safe around them. The best way to keep your cat from getting hit is to make sure they avoid all roads entirely!
Cats were domesticated to hunt mice and other pests, that is very true. They are still used on farms today to hunt mice and other pests. I am of the boat that barn/farm cats can be useful if they are cared for properly, however they still can be damaging to the environment.
House pets, however, are a different story. They are not needed to manage pests in urban areas. I live by a busy street so there are no outdoor cats in my neighbourhood, and I’ve never seen evidence of a mouse here in my life.
It has also been proven that cats do more harm than good to non-pest wildlife because of their hunting. Even when it comes to their pest control, there are other alternatives to keep your house and neighbourhood rodent free. I’d love to see a source saying that the rodent population would explode without cats. Native predators did a great job of keeping the rodent population under control in the Americas before colonists came along, and likely would fill the niche again. In England, there are foxes and falcons, not to mention man-made rodent control like rat poison and mouse traps. In the past, cats have done a lot of harm to the environment, wiping countless endangered species off the map. The environment already has a ton of bad stuff as is. We shouldn’t be making it worse.
Besides, they also bring mice into the house. Thats gross. I don’t want parasite-ridden, disease filled rodents running around in my walls or left on my pillow at night. Yuck. How do you put up with that?
Here’s some resources on how cats have damaged native wildlife, and why roaming cats are harmful to the environment.
Hey, you know if I told people it was okay to drive without wearing a seat belt because in my personal experience of very little driving I’d never had an accident, I’d be irresponsible at best, and while most people wouldn’t waste the energy trying to convince me to wear my seat belt, the very least they would hope for is that I stopped telling other people it’s okay.
For context, I’m a veterinarian with nearly a decade experience in clinical practice, in Australia which nobody could claim is US-centric, in rural practice, suburban practice, and city emergency centers.
I will always want to keep my cats indoors. I always encourage people who are on the fence to keep their cats indoors. I even suggest to those with indoor-outdoor cats who are stuck in their ways that there are safer alternatives to letting them free-roam wherever they like, because I genuinely want well for my patients and want to give their owners good advice.
So I am going to add to the points above.
Predators and Environmental Dangers.
There is pretty much always something which will put a cat as risk if they are roaming around the neighborhood, wherever humans live. Australia doesn’t have terrestrial predators down here larger than a fox but it is still not a safe place for cats to be. Regardless of wildlife predators (and we’ve got plenty of poisonous critters who wont eat the cat, but can still kill it) wherever you have humans living, you will find:
Dogs. Whether they’re confined to their backyard and maim a trespassing cat, or have escaped confinement and entered your property, a dog will make a mess of a cat. Worse if there is a pair of dogs encouraging each other.
Asshole humans. Some humans will deliberately poison cats because they don’t want them on their property, and if you allow your cat to roam you risk this happening. Over-the-counter painkillers dissolved in milk is unfortunately common. Heck, when I was a kid my late uncle did it to get rid of cats that were pooping in his vegetable patch.
Lilies. Cats often like to chew plants and lilies are very popular, especially in Summer, but also extremely toxic and will cause kidney failure with even a little nibble, or grooming the pollen off the cats’ fur. Of course lilies are not the only toxic plants out there, but they’re the most notorious for cats.
Rat poison. If cats can access it they can eat it, and if there’s rodents about there is a reasonable chance that somebody is using it. It’s not commonly diagnosed, but when it is the owners often have no idea how the outdoor cat gained access.
Breeding
Yes cats should absolutely, no exceptions be desexed before going outside, and microchipped as well. Unfortunately this often doesn’t happen, and the occasional cat at 4 months still gets pregnant. Even then, neutered cats can often be upset or attached by hormonal non-neutered cats, and stress can cause physical illness in cats.
Disease
I wish, oh how I wish, that there was a vaccine for everything that was 100% effective. That’s simply not the case. Even in a country like Australia where we don’t worry about rabies there are other diseases we worry about much more with outdoor cats including but not limited to -
Feline Leprosy (thought to be caught from rodent bites)
FIV (vaccine is only partially effective, and increases the risk of injection site sarcoma)
Cat bite abscesses
Parasites. Fleas are bad enough in some places where even cats on preventative will still pick up the odd one, but there’s not that many options for preventing ticks on cats in areas where that’s relevant.
Accidents and injury are more common with unsupervised outside access.
Idiopathic Cystitis secondary to stress from conflicts with other cats
Squamous Cell Carcinoma (super aggressive skin cancer) of white-faced cats. This is a huge issue here in Australia.
I see many people say “I am a responsible outdoor cat owner. every time my cat is injured or ill I take it to the vet.” And that’s good! But that’s also the bare minimum. If your cat is injured or sick is should go to the vet. But it comes a point where if this is happening a lot we really should be talking about making changes to that cat’s lifestyle, and preventing it from free roaming is high on the list.
Cars
I feel like cars deserve their own point because the OP pointed out how dogs will slip their lead and get away from their humans and can be hit by a car, and that’s a bad thing. But didn’t seem to realize that they’re advocating for letting the cat get away from their human so have the same risk (with more severe consequences because smaller body). And some people deliberately try to hit cats, especially in the countryside where they consider them pests.
Dogs and cats which are unsupervised and free roaming are both at risk of being hit by cars! Only we think unsupervised cats are ‘acceptable while unsupervised dogs are obviously not.
Almost done
I nearly never bring up impacts on wildlife because it’s so region specific, and most cat owners don’t believe their cat is hunting much anyway, but cats predating native species has a huge impact in Australia and I acknowledge that impact, but most people who are undecided care more about their pet’s welfare than hypothetical wildlife welfare, so I focus on those points.
But I personally see plenty of possums fall victim to cat bites, and assure you the wildlife carers would have less work to do if all cats were kept inside.
If someone insists their cat outside, I usually tell them the same thing. Start with small periods of time, five minutes or so just before dinner time, so they’re good and hungry, so they have only a little time and come straight back in for dinner instead of wandering. Even better is leash training, or a catio. You know, the same level of care that you might provide a dog.
If you, OP, want to give your cat unsupervised access to the outdoors, then good luck to you. I wish those cats the best of health, but as a veterinarian I cannot ever recommend it.
When it’s applied to mill breeders and pet shops, I’m in complete agreement with it. If I remember right, that’s what it was originally MEANT to apply to. Then it became co-opted by Animal Rights Activists, who are generally against pet ownership completely. It became a blanket statement against breeders of any sort, vilifying responsible and ethical breeders and those who purchase from them.
So, four years ago, I started looking for a prospective service dog. It was natural for me to start my search within rescues, because most of them were known to me already. I look like a pretty good applicant: I work in rescues, I specialize in handling animals with difficult temperaments, I have vet records stretching back to when I came of age (basically, I’ve been fully responsible for my cats’ vet care since I was 18), and all of my animals have either died of old age or random chance (I’ve never rehomed any of my personal animals for any reason, including health issues).
But it turned out to be borderline impossible.
The fact that I was looking for a service dog prospect was an immediate disqualification for most of them. This is because a lot of dogs (especially rescue dogs) wash out of training and can’t go on to become fully trained service dogs. Since most disabled people can only afford one or two dogs, most of these dogs are returned to the shelter/rescue. That knocked out about 60% of the rescues I was looking at.
Another rescue asked for an ‘application fee’, which smacks of a scam to me. It was around 40 dollars, but still. That’s a shitty fucking thing to do. :/
Another priced their dogs around 800 dollars, which is on the low end range for popular purebred dogs from pet-quality breeders. There was no way I was going to pay 800 dollars for a dog with an unknown genetic background and no health testing if I could pay the same thing and get a dog WITH all that.
Another asked me to take pictures of my fenced in yard, including the gate and ALL the fencing. My land is 22 acres. While it IS fully fenced, many of the fences are inaccessible to me because they’re on cliffs. There was no way I could physically get all the pictures.
Most require that you own a house. I rent.
Another rescue had a sneaky little addendum in their policy, stating that they can visit my home at ANY TIME without permission or knowledge and take the dog back within two weeks of adopting it. This place also had a very high adoption fee (around 500 dollars). I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was something along the lines of, “You’re not ADOPTING this dog. This is a temporary foster for two weeks, and the adoption fee is non-refundable if we take the dog back within those two weeks, which we may do so at any time for any reason without your knowledge or permission.”
I was feeling pretty good about the next rescue, until it came out that my pet reptiles are all intact. Like… they’re non-breeding. But the fact that they weren’t spayed or neutered was enough, apparently, and I was denied. “Come back when they’ve been fixed,” I was told. The fact that they’re reptiles, housed separately, and literally have never made contact with each other was deemed irrelevant, as was the fact that attempting to alter a 50 gram gecko would likely kill her. It was the LOOK of things that was important, rather than the actual animal welfare.
The local poodle rescue had a waiting list of approximately 5 years.
There was no way I was going to wait that long. So I started looking at shelters. There are three in my travel radius (did I mention that, as a disabled person, my travel radius is quite small? Because it is). One was immediately knocked out because it has a long history of transphobia against me in particular. One was knocked out because it was going through a panleuk issue at the moment, so I wasn’t going to risk bringing it home or to work. The third was almost completely bully breed mixes, chihuahuas, or huskies (which are all fine breeds, but not compatible with my lifestyle).
Another issue with ‘adopt don’t shop’ is that it implies ALL rescues/shelters are equal. They aren’t. I’ve also encountered some extremely unethical rescues who outright lie to adopters about an animals’ temperament or health. I’ve seen rescues who actively purchase puppies from mill auctions, because demand for ‘rescue purebreeds’ is so high. This is especially common with cavalier spaniels and other in-demand small breeds.
I recently cut ties with a cat rescue who actively refused to report a bad breeder for animal abuse/neglect—-this breeder was mass-producing cats and not socializing them or treating them for heavy health issues. Every few months, they’d turn over whatever they couldn’t sell to the rescue and these cats were inevitably poorly socialized messes who couldn’t even be touched (and these were cats who required a high amount of grooming). The rescue didn’t want to turn the breeder in because these cats were in high demand; they were 100% sure guaranteed adoptions. People didn’t care that they weren’t healthy animals; they just wanted something pretty with a sob story.
Not every breeder is responsible. Not every rescue is responsible either. The saying SHOULD be ‘adopt responsibly, shop responsibly’. On a purely pedantic note, you SHOULD be shopping responsibly regardless, because adopting is also shopping. You shouldn’t adopt the first cute animal with a sad backstory. You need to look into everything and make sure they’re the right fit for you and your life.
I fully support rescues. But I also support breeding. My goal as a rescue worker is to create a world where every animal is born with a home already waiting for them and the shelters are empty. For that, we need breeders to keep producing healthy animals.
Basically, don’t vilify people who buy from responsible, ethical breeders. We have our reasons for doing so.
