The cat is abducting itself. They’re not dogs. They’re rarely loyal.
Comment on Meow
PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 4 days ago
DO NOT feed strangers cats. Water is fine. If you feed it, at best you’re fucking up its diet, at worst you’re basically abducting the cat.
zephorah@lemm.ee 4 days ago
ProvableGecko@lemmy.world 4 days ago
They’re rarely loyal.
I condemn this anti-feline propaganda
CooperRedArmyDog@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
As someone who is stauncly pro dog … and weary of cats… I feel like I need to take a side in this debate
JackbyDev@programming.dev 3 days ago
Then say something. I have a cat and a dog. They’re both amazing. They are both loving and loyal. They play together so well. My dog needs to chase my cat to get hyped to eat, my cat knows and plays along. My cat lets me know when the dog is on the porch and wants back in. My dog cobs my cat.
Cats and dogs are both fucking amazing. Insisting one is better than the other is foolish. We are blessed to have such amazing creatures in our lives.
Steve@startrek.website 3 days ago
Back when my cat was alive I got occasional reports that he would enter various other houses nearby and meow by the fridge until he was given a cold cut.
echodot@feddit.uk 3 days ago
Does a cat in me who has a Facebook group and pictures of him sat on everyone’s beds. In the summer he came into my house and ate my cat’s food. Cheeky bugger.
Ataraxia@lemmy.world 3 days ago
We have many strays we are trying to rescue amd until then they get fed and if some rando is letting their cat out to eat whatever the heck then find (and steal my food) on my property that’s the cat’s owner being the asshole. I’m trying to help needy cats and I can’t even oht traps down to get them medical attention because I could end up catching some irresponsible person’s cat.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 days ago
We have an asshole stray in our neighborhood, but she’s smart enough she’s figured out traps. One of these days we’ll get her.
Empricorn@feddit.nl 4 days ago
Pet cats should live inside, with plenty of toys and people that care for them, not out killing bird populations and rushing getting run over, etc. Outdoor cats have much shorter life spans…
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 4 days ago
I can see the logic but it does feel like the cat’s already out of the bag on this one. There are so many free-ranging and feral cats that I wonder if it makes any difference at this point.
WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
It does. Travel to a 3rd world country and look at the difference. Dogs and cats everywhere due to no cultural expectation to keep them indoors or neuter them.
Here is an article better clarifying the effect of our cute little killing machines:
scientificamerican.com/…/cats-kill-a-staggering-n…
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 4 days ago
That article seems very new-world-centric
Europe, Mainland Asia & Africa all have native small cats and so the birds and small mammals have evolved to deal with them, the issue is that in Australia & the Americas they haven’t and so that’s where all the risk of species actually being wiped out is - in the old world the cats largely just replace the larger predators that humans have killed off in the ecosystem
Maiq@lemy.lol 3 days ago
Maiq has heard its dangerous to be your friend.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
I’ve seen a lot of stats about cats and it seems very likely they have important conservation implications in island ecosystems where birds did not evolve with similar predators.
But I’ve not seen evidence of conservation impacts on the mainland where we do and did have similar predators in the past. Just stating that cats eat a lot of birds doesn’t mean they’re a threat to overall populations.
TheSlad@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
People buy cats from shelters, then let them be outdoor cats. It does matter.
On the flip side, I’ve homed three outdoor/feral cats in my house. They adjust to being indoor cats fine.
Cats are an invasive species in most places and are super damaging to the local fauna.
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 4 days ago
Most places is a stretch… They’re invasive in around ⅓ of Earth’s land area and where less than ¼ of people live
pumpkinseedoil@mander.xyz 4 days ago
Where I live there is practically no risk of them getting ran over. But yes they do catch 2-3 birds per yer.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Cats that have had to live on their own for any period of time catch a few more than 2-3 birds per year. Our guy caught enough prey that he was actually getting on the chubby side.
(Where we lived the windows were the air conditioning, so no way to keep him inside, and he was already a stray. So he wasn’t conditioned to it. In fact he’d destroy a screen to get out if he had to.)
pumpkinseedoil@mander.xyz 3 days ago
Well, we were talking about pet cats, not cats that had to live on their own
Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 2 days ago
My cat figured out the dog door by watching the dogs. She’s inside 80% of the time but prefers to do her business outside if the weather’s clear and goes out for an hour or so about twice a day besides that.
Of all things, my part basset hound mix is a bird killing machine despite the stubby legs, broken hip and arthritis. I don’t know how she manages to do it, but lots of half eaten bird corpses started showing up in our yard right after we got her, but only in the back yard which she could reach via the dog door. Starting before the cat started using the dog door.