Keeping cats indoors is a rare solution where everybody wins
Keeping cats indoors is a rare solution where everybody wins
In the debate over protecting native wildlife from domestic felines, one thing is often overlooked: cats should be kept indoors for the sake of cats
cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/1965826
I am not here to make the case that cats should be kept indoors for the sake of local wildlife – that case has been made over and over and over and over again. Cat owners know these arguments, and if they have not been persuaded by the fact that cats kill more than 6 million native animals in Australia a day they will not be persuaded by me.
There is a fairly tedious assumption that if you love wildlife you must hate cats, and visa versa. And nothing will turn cat people off faster than encountering a person who hates cats.
I understand this. I also hate people who hate cats. So let’s set the birds and the bettongs to one side for the moment, and consider the other, obvious fact: cats should be kept indoors for the sake of cats.
this needs to be said louder, there is no good reason to keep cats outside the house other than laziness and purposeful ignorance. Beyond that is malicious intent. Roaming cats should be taken to shelters to protect both them and wildlife until people learn to keep them inside like every other pet.
3This is the best summary I could come up with:
Most days, when the sun hits that part of the floorboards, our cat Laurie can be found there, lazing in a sunbeam watching the birds through the glass.
The Invasive Species Council responded by calling on the New South Wales government to introduce laws requiring that cats be kept indoors.
She escaped a few times when she was younger, usually making it no more than one body length from the door before freezing in terror at the overwhelming vastness of the outdoors.
Once, when we were visiting my parents’ farm, I clipped her into a harness with the expectation that she would enjoy exploring the yard, but she flattened her robust body to the ground and refused to move.
There was a moment, in our first winter in this house, when we woke to the sound of rats chewing the ceiling, then I wished my old cat Elmo was still alive.
If Nugget hadn’t lost the leg and decided to stick closer to home, I doubt she would have lived past five.
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1Cats get sad, but also not run over or in fights. They really wanna go outside though
-2In my experience (2 cats, 1 inside and 1 outside), if you have raised the cat always inside, they are completely fine with it. But if you give them a taste of that freedom, its very hard to put the cat back in the bag. My parents outdoor cat learned to operate the dog flap very early on, and when the flap is locked he will climb the flywire/curtains to get free :(
For my current, inside cat, our solution has been supervised outside time. We put her on a lead and harness, and let her explore the garden. No risk to wildlife, no fights or road risks. And she is definitely a happy cat.
4