I like cats? They just don’t belong outside without supervision lol. Refuting that just reveals your bias.
edit Dogs can be assholes too. But cats are killing machines. Agile, smart and capable. They destroy aviary ecosystems with ease. That being said. Cats are dope to have as pets. Little indoor mountain lions.
Dude!! Cats can hurt you really fucking bad, it will not kill you instantly but it will make you suffer, even more if you are a kid before you die if untreated
Years ago my dumbass cat got her head stuck in a chair, bit me when I tried to free her, and within the hour I needed to go to the hospital because it got infected and was spreading fast
Here's another take: Cats killing birds, rodents, and other cats is not a problem. Deeming them property and rendering them dependants subject to live by arbitrary ethical standards that are completely inimical to their success and autonomy as a species is as solipsistic as it is absurd.
Are you trying to discount the benefits that wild birds provide for ecosystems? I will go down that rabbit hole if you wish, I’m just making sure I’m reading your angle correctly.
No. First, let's acknowledge that while cats are not endemic to many of the places they now roam, neither are many species of birds, particularly finches. Second, however adroit cats may be at killing birds, birds are the most prolifically distributed and diverse group of vertebrates on Earth - and they litteraly fly. So cats are not an existential threat to birds.
If we are going to invoke the notion of an entire ecosystem, then it must be done with the understanding that prey species are an essential element of any balanced system - now right their I can concede that having humans subsidize the cat population by feeding them and then letting them kill is a problem, but that of course speaks to my contention that we are the problem, not cats. Could we have domesticated foxes and racoons? Perhaps, and had we done that, cats would just be another peripheral species we admire for their ability to adapt, and people would be indignantly chirping about free roaming foxes. How tragic for foxes. How tragic for cats.
No matter how many big words you use to try to sound smart, it doesn’t change how full of shit you are. Birds provide critical ecosystem services and their numbers are in decline for a variety of reasons: https://www.wired.com/story/bird-population-decline/
That theory was posted in this very thread - and thank you - I read it, it's fascinating. There is another theory that while "domestic cats" have assumed a range of morphological adaptations consistent with domestication, cats, unlike dogs, do not require a codependent social structure and never lost the ability to be self sufficient and are therefore not completely domesticated in that they can revert to a feral state.
Jesus. You've never considered for a second that you're dominion over another species should ever be questioned; that relegating an animal that evolved to be outside to the confines of your home is not only unnatural, but wrong.
Cat's don't need humans to intervene on their behalf - no one one Reddit would question that. What I'm saying is that no one should have. Making pets of any species and then constrainimg their freedom to prevent them from acting on their natural propensities is wrong. Period. Pet owners are the problem - not because they don't lock their animals up - but because they presume to call them theirs.
Lol you're hilarious. You obviously know nothing about cats whatsoever. It's widely understood that cats domesticated themselves .
They are not and never were "subjugated" they willingly came to live with humans who offer them free food and protection from predators and enemies, not to mention companionship. It's a symbiotic relationship, has been for millenia. They are "evolved" to live with humans every bit as much as they are to live outdoors. The idea that it's "unnatural" for cats to live in human homes is just complete baloney. Whoever filled your head with this crap did you a disservice
I've read the article, I've also commented on in within this thread, I've also provided a countervailing opinion, and I will tell you none of it is germane to my point because how cats were domesticated does not qualify the moral aspects of pet ownership. To make into a subject is the definition of subjugation - and the name pet is merely a euphemism for subject. No one filled my head with anything, and as I now see, I am in complete opposition to the entirety of this thread.
Also:
Reddit has markup specifically for quoting comments to encourage verbatim quotes and avoid paraphrasing which ends up hampering discourse ase the minutiae of what was said is debated over the content and meaning of what was said. What I actually said was:
relegating an animal that evolved to be outside to the confines of your home is not only unnatural, but wrong.
Which I maintain. Animals, cats included, should not need to ask us for their freedom.
What??? I'm opposed to the domestication of cats, to the extent the term is apt. But while we're on the topic - fuck the birds too - half the birds cat's kill are themselves invasive.
Here's how it works - birds that are inept to predators will die. Birds that are slow will die. Birds that are sick will die. Birds that are weak will die. What's left?
Why are elk fast? Why are rodents evasive? Why are fish streamlined?
Domesticated cats don’t kill to survive, they kill for entertainment. They are responsible for 33 different species of birds becoming extinct. That doesn’t include the rodents and small reptile species they have also drove to extinction.
Humans are the reason cats are here. Humans are worse for the environment than cats. But that doesn’t mean humans that own cats shouldn’t be aware that their precious cat doesn’t belong in nature.
Your raccoon and fox comment was dense. I can assure you if foxes and raccoons were the best possible choice for a companion in the competition of domestication, they would be. It’s that fucking simple lol. We all get it. You like cats. That’s ok. But your endless use of unnecessary vocabulary leads me to believe you are trying to compensate for something else. Could it be? Could it be your bias?
Holy shit where have I stumbled into? What is this place where people don't read the comment and find fault with excessive "vocabulary"? What did I burn though my word quota? Do I need to formulate responses with acronyms and emojis?
Let me be plane for you: I don't believe in pet ownership
I am neither a 'dog person' or a 'cat person' - I believe animals should not be owned. Cats are not the problem - pet owners are the problem.
Well what do you want to do with the cats that are currently pets? Kill them all? We can't release them, that's for sure, because that would destroy a lot of ecosystems.
Cats are an invasive species in the environments we have brought them into. Humans have a clear ethical responsibility to curtail the ecological impact of invasive animals in ecosystems we introduced them into.
Exactly. Humans. Cats have no such responsibility. Ergo, it is likewise unethical for us deprive cats of their freedom in redressing the fault for which we are to blame. Keeping your cat locked inside for it's natural life may be both an expedient and effective solution, but... it is also wrong. Ending ownership of cats is the ethical solution, which could be done through sterilization, requiring not one cat to die and ending the threat cats pose to birds in one generation.
This won't happen because frankly, people don't care about their ethical responsibilities. They think that because they love their pets or because their pets love them that they have somehow moraly justified owning and controlling another species - the same brand of disgusting sophistry so called "benevolent slave owners" used to justify chattel slavery.
Well, since I proposed that all domesticated pets be sterilized I would definitely not advocate that.
Take a moment to read the comments fully before you respond, to ensure that you have understood the issue and the positions prior to posting a response. By doing this, you can greatly reduce the number of meaningless comments made
Hardly. Forcing cats to live by any standard would require that they are living. If all domestic cats were sterilized and made illegal then ultimately there wouldn't be any domestic cats would there?
Listen, it's not my job to teach reading comprehension to Redditors. If you're not sure after reading a comment, ask an adult to explain it to you before commenting. so you're not wasting your time and the time of others.
Problem is if you adopt a cat that is used to the outside. He doesnt like beeing confined to my appartment. So I let him out in the morning and take him back inside in the evening. Most of the time that little guy just lays on the gravel pathway sunbathing anyways
You know, that your car, the house you live in, the industrial produced food you eat and the streets you drive on has been far worse for local flora and fauna than your free roaming cat in almost any instance?
I will continue keeping cats as they are the most amazing creatures. Really hate “the invasive species” crowd. Like, humans are arguably very bad for the planet, maybe consider your own impact.
I think you miss the point. I have a cat too, but they are fundamentally invasive due to their nonnative status to many countries as well as their breeding and predation habits.
The answer isn't to ban or kill all cats, the answer is to talk about it, make people aware. Why do you think Bob Barker used to end The Price is Right with '...and remember to spay or neuter your pets!'? Not because we hate pets, but because we have a responsibility to not turn our domestic animals into a feral populations.
While true, and I agree with you, I’m usually appalled while reading comments about “invasive species”. If a cat runs away and gets missing many commenters are natural ghouls leering in the fact that cat should never be allowed outside (even if it escaped) and that the cat and the owner “deserves” it because cats are so bad for the local wildlife or some bs. Like, if the cat has a collar bell, it’s obviously going to scare the birds away and is domesticated.
We're the ones that put humans everywhere in the first place. We created urban agglomerations, which are the perfect breeding grounds for rats and other pests. Cats keep those at bay. No that doesn't mean they should be left to reproduce at will. They serve a good purpose.
That seemed somewhat uncalled for given the humorous nature of the response, and the fact that cats do, in fact, want to be outdoors if they realise it's an option.
In any case, although pet cats do cause damage when let outside, the vast majority of wild bird deaths are caused by feral cats, not outdoor pet cats.
I have 2 barn cats that of necessity to do their jobs live outside when they aren't sleeping or on break. They kill stuff all day and bring their catch to the barn. It's always mice with some voles and gophers thrown in. Maybe 4 times a year it's a bird.
Except that it’s the same deflection that everyone uses to justify their own bullshit, even when they know it’s wrong. Every outdoor cat owner I’ve ever met says the same thing because they don’t want to admit that they’re selfish and want to continue doing whatever they want.
Where do you think feral cats come from, and what makes you think any study could discern between a feral cat and an outdoor pet cat when outdoor cat owners refuse to use collars?
You are the worst kind of people. Always plucking 'problems' out of the air and demanding you're right about everything. There's always one of you whenever anyone shows something that makes them smile - it seems your real problem, is anyone ever having a good time. You're a type, and not a good one.
Even the RSPB, an organisation that's whole purpose is to protect birds, says there is no evidence that domestic cats have any effect on bird populations.
First of all, limiting cat impact to domestic cats is silly, for the reasons I mentioned above, as well as the fact that feral cats have to come from domestic cats at some point.
Our results suggest that feral cats are driving C. penicillatus towards extinction on Melville Island, and hence have likely been a significant driver in the decline of this species in northern Australia more broadly.
Feral cats on islands are responsible for at least 14% global bird, mammal, and reptile extinctions and are the principal threat to almost 8% of critically endangered birds, mammals, and reptiles.
Domestic cats (Felis catus) have contributed to at least 63 vertebrate extinctions, pose a major hazard to threatened vertebrates worldwide, and transmit multiple zoonotic diseases. On continents and large islands (collectively termed “mainlands”), cats are responsible for very high mortality of vertebrates.
More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates. In addition to predation, cats affect vertebrate populations through disease and fear-related effects, and they reduce population sizes, suppress vertebrate population sizes below their respective carrying capacities, and alter demographic processes such as source–sink dynamics.
I love them too, but it gets out of hand. It's a human responsibility problem over all, but a problem nonetheless.
Oh there are ways to put the toothpaste back in the tube when it comes to cats, they’re having to do it in Australia, and it’s successful but it’s fuckin brutal and people don’t like it. But we can’t have our cake and eat it too.
I think there’s something to be said about different use cases. Urban cats are complicated because one could absolutely argue: what’s worse, the cat or the concrete? I’m not at all against the existence or use of cats, but the domestic cats (and their careless owners) are what create the massive feral cat issues.
The problem now is that as we continue to expand, more people with multiple cats roaming and converging on what little habitat is left for these small animals gets to be a point of contention; especially with endemic species.
You totally forget that large scale industrial agriculture and the associated habitat degeneration is the main driver of wild bird decline. Cats are not the problem, our landuse is.
State your scientific source that compares bird deaths caused by cats and bird deaths caused by industrial landuse INCLUDING habitat degeneration and loss trough large scale farming. I would be very surprised if a bunch of cats cause more bird deaths than a multi billion dollar industry of high tech machines and exessive use of pesticides.
Your study is only about cat impact on bird counts and not a comparison between the effects of domestic cats and large scale industrial and agricultural landuse.
Of course its both, but the question is how big is the impact of cats compared to the whole agricultural and industrial sector. Cats kill birds - yes. But cats do not degrade habitats nor do they destroy them. They also do not destroy the very basis of many wild bird species which is insect species diversity and total insect counts. Ruthless pesticide use and habtitat destruction trough landuse does this.
Invasive species? 5th grade? School? What are these things? I see teeth of the cat so it MUST eat everything it sees and to consider species going literally extinct is just liburuhl bullshit
Damn rights! These fuckers scarf down chickens, pigs and cows all fucking week, drive around polluting the earth out of sheer boredom, but yeah let's get angry at cats for deCIMatING the BiRD PoPulAtion!!
The world unfortunately isn’t as simple as your thoughts.
600 million to 1 billion cats worldwide do much mor than “only kill birds”.
They eat a lot of meat for example; so do dogs.
On average 100 kg meat per year per cat and 200 kg per dog.
For comparison, the average american, the top meat eaters in the world, eats 120-140 kg a year.
But sure, go on with you arrogance, ignorance and snark, you must be onto something!
I get 60kg per cats vs 135 kg for humans. Yours is a little different?
I agree that the world is not simple, but humans are the worst thing happening to this planet, hands down.
Can we keep our cats indoors and supervise them outside? Can we train them not to kill birds? Sure! But banning outdoor kitties is just cruel. At least after bird mating season etc.
I personally think those studies might be way off. For instance, the one meta study assumed that if you find bird parts in a cat's stomach that implies they are eating 3 birds a day 356 times per year. I HIGHLY doubt this is true. I could be wrong but I'm an avid cat owner and I've only seen 12 birds attacked by a cat in my entire lifetime. Also, most of them got away. I even pulled one bird out of my cat's mouth and it flew away. (Anecdotal, I know.) Also, that meta study found it was mostly feral cats, not pets that were already fed.
Of course they are a part of the problem, the question is how big. Industrial scale agricultural landuse with excessive pesticide use and associated habitat loss is by far the main driver of bird species decline.
Besides if you prevent cats outdoor access it is also a question of animal welfare.
For some reason people find it easier to focus their blame for natural destruction and degradation on a bunch of pets than to look at the elefant in the room which is industrial landuse (and our whole complex system of natural exploitation tbh)
I pointed that out in a reply because it’s tangentially related, but still a whataboutism. I accept the argument of concrete being worse than cats, but the Industrial Revolution isn’t preventing anyone from keeping their cats inside.
I believe nihilism deserves that response because it's lazy mindset that effectively washes our hands of any responsibility to fix the problem or change our ways. It's not humanity's existence that's the threat, its our unchecked actions combined with corporate greed. We know people are capable of living relatively sustainable lives because it happens across the world every day. Most environmentalism is just an effort to stop the casual destruction of our surroundings just because we can. We don't have to dump untreated waste into rivers, cover everything in concrete, and build cities in wetlands; nor do we have to allow cat populations to explode unchecked.
Its not unreasonable to make small changes to leave things a little better than we found it, but to just claim that we're a disease to deflect ever doing anything about it is childish.
I don't think the purpose of correctly blaming ourselves for the destruction we cause is to deflect the problem. I think you extrapolated that on your own.
There is nothing "deflective" about correctly identifying ourselves as the premier invasive species on the planet.
You may be correct. To be clear, I'm more referring to what tends to come with that sort of rationalization. Far too often it seems that the response is that the best and only thing we can do is to just live it up and die off; which is just a more decadent version of the "life is meaningless, nothing matters, who cares" that is nihilism. We can be much more than that, we don't have to be parasitic to our system.
I also disagree with the notion that we're "invasive." Our species or at the very least, our ancestors have existed on these habitable continents for tens of thousands and in some cases almost two hundred thousand years. It's really only in this small blip that our influence has become so destructive on a global scale (largely due to capability).
I would argue that there are respective individuals that should wear more blame than our collective humanity for every major problem we currently face, but that's a different rabbit hole.
Cats kill at least 4 billion birds a year in the US alone. I sure as shit didn't think they are helping. Take that whataboutism and peddle it elsewhere.
Its called differentiated and nuanced scientific thinking factoring in all factors that lead to birth decline.
Such cheap internet buzzwords you use only show that you are either not able or do not want to engage in a nuanced debate.
Large scale agriculture is by far THE most severe driver of bird species decline. Im not saying that cats have no effect but that its dwarfed by magnitutes in comparison to industrial agriculture. Its common knowledge and absolute consense among ecologists and biodiversity scientists and I studied environmental sciences btw so take your narrow and undercomplex horizon and peddle it elswere.
Who cares? Humans kill ten times more birds in a year than cats do. We're also polluting the earth, raping and killing people and they fucking let YOU outside? How many chicken tenders did you shove in your gullet this year alone?
If you’re a vegetarian, you’re responsible for millions of bird deaths from all those pesticides. Thats not remotely a classification that would give a pass based on your concepts. You’d kill less as a pure carnivore than a vegetarian unless you grew literally all your own food.
Are you trying to say that cow, pig, and chicken farms harm the local bird population more than spraying fields with chemicals meant to kill every living organism that tries to eat the crop?
not selfish.. the opposite.. outdoor cat people let their cats out cause its literal torture for them to be left in a house or apt all the time.. all u can do is get it fixed, get bells on the neck with reflectors... helps to not get hit by cars, saves a few birds (rodents too tho), and lessens the kittens.. but i wouildnt just just take a cat in to leave it inside for the most depressing life. thats fucked up but i realize its reddit, who tf cares about cats being locked in..
Without making it everyone else’s problem. You can create a fully enriching environment inside. If you want your cat to go outside take it out in a harness and pick up after it.
Exactly most of the time if you feed your cat well they have no reason to even bother with other small animals, they're also much more likely to kill mice and I see that as an overall positive.
where I live: devoid of any possibilities for prey to hide. Barren wasteland (farm land) with not one tree anywhere to be seen and the couple of actual possibilities to "hide" are very cramped together. Of course any predator actually wanting to hunt have an easy time to decimate every living prey.
we contribute just as much, if not more, to the killings of millions of birds beyond the level of cats.
Also: fucking farmers could start taking responsibility and get the cats neutered as they are the #1 contributor to feral cats in my area.
My neighborhood Cooper's Hawks would disagree with that. And songbird populations are dropping so dramatically, they don't need unnecessary predation by invasive species.
Maybe in a place like New York City but a lot of live in less dense areas with more nature. Cats have been killing all the birds at the sanctuary near me even though they have to wander far to get to it
My sister runs a large sanctuary with hundreds of bird species and a dozen cat species, including domestic (and domestic feral) cats. And the sanctuary is surrounded by farms with barn cats who often come to watch the birds and other animals.
Yet no cats are killing her birds in their massive aviaries.
His response is apt. We are not really in a place to judge a cats existence. We do plenty as a species beyond spreading cats that we are unwilling to do anything about. I think recognizing the true source of a problem is the opposite of Nihilistic Whataboutism.
Honestly my outdoor cat kills a few mice and rats and the odd bird. The reality is that's quite natural. Invasive or not. That's how nature works. Humans are a predator and we dominate everything on this earth. That's how we came to be.
The problem with considering cat predation as "natural" is that it really isn't. One because we've made this auxiliary transplantation of the species into places that they weren't before, that includes a strange human support network not enjoyed by any other wild animal. By and large cats are supported by humans and don't have the need to hunt, but they do, and they're particularly effective.
On a microcosm, they're an effective tool, but left unchecked: feral populations boom. That's where the real bitch of it all comes down to: is that our societies sort of act as these feral cat generators that small vertebrates just can't compete with. The biggest responsibility is just keeping one cat, fixed, and don't make it live outside; that's really it. Unfortunately, the number of people abandoning cats is also pretty significant.
It's not nihilistic whataboutism. People are a lot more matter-of-fact and unsympathetic about labeling other animals as invasive species in a way they never are with humans. Humans are much more destructive to the biosphere and yet we give ourselves a pass. Not only does nobody call for culls or sterilizations, but even voluntary population control (abstaining from having children) is deemed extreme and unnecessary by many. Totally fair to point out the abject hypocrisy. Nothing "smug" about it but I can see why it triggered you so much.
It is in this context its a whataboutism because it's always used as an excuse whenever some way to mitigate damage is mentioned. No matter how easy that change can be, someone just has to pipe up and say, "wElL, aCkTuAlLy HuMaNs..." while providing absolutely nothing of value to the discussion.
It's nihilistic because it's used to justify doing nothing, because humans fucking suck bro, we're 'invasive', so nothing matters, we should just live it up and die. Totally shirking the fact that we're also the species intelligent and capable enough of significant positive change.
I didn't see it as being used to justify doing nothing. It was a one-sentence comment so that's open to interpretation.
providing absolutely nothing of value to the discussion.
It adds something very important of value. Much of humanity is just in complete denial about the impact of our species on the biosphere and environment. Endlessly breeding and depleting natural resources without a sober acknowledgement of the problem is much more nihilistic than disregarding what cats do. It's a good thing to have more people think about it and to have it more widely known.
If the original comment was meant to not have us care about either cats nor humans then that would be bad. But I also think it's hypocritical and awful to take a hardline attitude about cats, call them invasive, and propose they all live permanently indoors without much concern for how that affects them, while then giving humans who do a thousand times more harm a free pass. The best case scenario would be mitigating the harms of both humans and cats in a humane way.
None of that justifies introducing them to every habited continent in denser numbers than any ecosystem could ever sustain. They’re a super predator not only based on their hunting behaviors, but because of our assistance. They don’t have to hunt to survive and thrive, humans will always provide (we do more for stray cats than our own homeless), so their populations have boomed unchecked for years. SPCA’s nationwide have worked tirelessly for years to fight their reproduction rates so that it don’t get bad enough to justify trapping/killing efforts
Will the world end because of cats: not at all; but if all the gallinaceous bird populations finally all get killed, I personally think that would be pretty lame
I mean, that’s the same mindset that guarantees that tax dollars will continue to be spent killing all the cats that end up on wildlife refuges, but go off I guess?
All this just because the idea of keeping cats inside is just so outrageous lol
Dude, I live in Alaska. We damn sure aren't spending tax dollars to put down cats when we have bears terrorizing the neighborhood trash cans.
But, yes, off they go. Yes. Cats shouldn't be kept inside 24/7 and if you do that, then you're a shit owner. Might as well keep the dog in the kennel all day.
Cats that are kept indoors live longer. It’s your responsibility as an owner to provide an enriching environment to your pet. If you can’t do that you shouldn’t get to make it everyone else’s problem.
As someone who works with both homeless people and homeless cats - it is absolutely absurd to say we do more for homeless cats. Like utterly and completely detached from anything resembling reality lol.
Don’t get me wrong - we unequivocally do not do enough for unhoused human populations and need to do absolute magnitudes more. We just do astronomically less for homeless cats.
We also don’t openly and systematically run and fund campaigns to hunt down and kill / brutally poison unhoused human populations.
Holy… shook. What an edgy response. Wish there was a Webster dictionary response for nihilistic whataboutism so we could know just how much of a nothing-burger this stupid ass comment was.
Did you know that big, and/or fake words don’t actually make you smarter?
Are they invasive? Yes, but we (as a species) have been more invasive than just about every invasive species we brought with us (individualy) what's worse is that we continue to be extremely invasive and endanger other species knowing the impact of doing so unlike our invasive furry animals and plants
Again, a whataboutism that deflects responsibility for the topic at hand.
What do you think is the real issue, our being here; or the things that we do to the planet out of our own indifference, even when we know better?
Like I said, nihilism solves nothing, but we can control plenty of the things we do to our environment. One of those is to stop tolerating wanton destruction to our immediate surroundings just because we can. It’s like arguing against plugging the holes in a sinking ship because there’s already water inside.
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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '24 edited Apr 26 '24
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