talesfromtreatment:lilies-and-lesbians: agro-carnist: lilies-and-lesbians: agro-carnist: talking to
talesfromtreatment:lilies-and-lesbians: agro-carnist: lilies-and-lesbians: agro-carnist: talking to outdoor cat defenders like I get so fucking frustrating reading posts like these. Say what you want but I think that depriving cats of their natural environment is he same thing as letting them out and having a hunting problem. Except you can easily solve the hunting problem by sticking a bell on the cat, or letting it have supervised outside time. If you’re worried about your cat running away from you, then, spoiler alert, you aren’t a good cat owner. Another pro is that having your cats acclimated to your neighborhood prevents them from getting lost if they do get out. I hate this ‘issue’ and I hate people on both sides who seem to exist only to call their opposition terrible people. The comments on this post are just full of people willfully ignoring the other sides points and calling them names and generally being assholes. There are valid points on both sides, and context is so important. If you live in the middle of a city, yeah, leaving your cat outside is irresponsible and dangerous. But if you live in the countryside without busy roads and have a cat that works to catch mice and other pests, then let them do that. There are so many subtleties to this debate and I’m so tired of all the people straw manning the other party. There are no “subtleties” in this issue. You don’t say there are “subtleties” to letting a small child run around outside without supervision, or leaving a short haired dog outside in the snow with no shelter, or letting your dog terrorize and eat your neighbor’s chickens, or other forms of neglect and poor animal husbandry. Bells do NOTHING to inhibit a cat’s ability to hunt. They are capable of hunting even with a bell. The country still has dangers to cats. I see more roadkill cats in the countryside than in the city, and you have more predators that will eat cats, and there are still free roaming cats and dogs that will maim your animals. I see SO many outdoor cats whose owners live in the country come into the vet clinic with swollen faces and broken bones and respiratory disease and oozing wounds. The vast majority of emergency cat cases that require intense care and oftentimes EUTHANASIA are country cats. Stop trying to see “both sides” of a topic about objectively shitty animal care that is backed by science and statistics Cats were bred not necessarily domesticated to be pets, for most of history, they have been used to hunt pests and be working animals. I have seen so many statistics for both sides of this issue, and I am so tired of arguing about it. There are ways to supervise your cats time outside and I have known so many cats in my (small, relatively secluded) neighborhood and I have never, not once seen a cat killed by any means that you have mentioned. My cats are indoor and outdoor animals and I am honestly very offended by the notion that I do not love or spend time enriching my cats lives just because I let them out. My cats enjoy going out. They follow me on walks and stay clear of roads and only ever hunt mice. They also love being inside, played with them cuddled and pampered. There are environments where cats cat thrive outdoors. There are also environments where it is dangerous.Also please stop comparing cats to other animals and especially small human children. Cats posses countless evolutionary instincts and advantages that human children do not possess and it is a completely different matter. But on that note, children are capable of playing outside without getting harmed? I was always going in the woods when I was a relatively young child. I was perfectly safe and immensely enjoyed those experiences. Cats have the reasoning power of a *toddler*. This is an animal that will not use a litterbox to pee in of it has a uti because it begins to associate the box with the pain as in “box makes me hurt.” they are not creatures with large abilities to reason or find the true correlations between things. cats happily munch on toxic plants all the time. They get eaten by neighbor dogs all the time. They get run over all the time and every cat that was run over was “smart enough to avoid cars” until that one time it got turned into hamburger. If your cat is ever out of your direct supervision while uncontained outside you cannot claim that they never go in the street. You cannot claim that they only eat mice and never lizards or birds. Congrats that you’ve not seen any of this. I’ve never seen anyone die in a car crash, therefore car crashes and driving safely aren’t important because they don’t happen and can’t possibly happen to me or anyone I know. If you want your cats to spend time outside, build a catio or leash train them. Then everyone is safe. -- source link