Nope! Just decided to be a disappearing asshole for 36 hours and come back like nothing happened.
edit: thanks to all for the different perspectives. he is fixed, has all of his shots, and has his own temperature contolled kitty condo (aka the laundry room) that we put him into every night. we have a pretty good network of neighbors and pieced together his activities via security cameras. he’s a mouser for sure and that is his job until he decides to retire.
We don’t really have that problem in the UK. Where there are gardens the cats are mostly fine, they are usually neutered and most without owners are often adopted quickly by mad British people.
Those without gardens generally get cats to live indoors from the outset. The outdoor cats do affect bird populations but I would have to look for good evidence it’s to any extremes or even particularly bad. I suspect birds are affected much more by decreasing insect numbers.
They do catch a lot of mice but they don’t seem to be dying out, there’s always more of them. No, the likelihood of our cats dying in the wild is quite low compared to the US and other parts of the world where they aren’t an apex predator. About the worst animal encounter here is the fox and it’s rarely fatal.
They do get hit by vehicles and that’s probably one of the biggest causes but, again, it’s not affecting cat numbers much.
Of course the other reason they don’t come home is that they are stolen. That’s seen a big increase in recent years.
All my evidence is anecdotal and/or pulled out my arse. Any good evidence offered for correction gladly received.
We have yards here in the USA.
Most responsible pet owners spay/neuter their pets.
If you bag your dogs poop then you already understand how cats can be invasive.
One dog pooping on the ground is whatever, everyone’s dog is gross.
One cat killing a bird is whatever, everyone’s cats doing it day in day out…. A problem.
The issue primarily is that your cat is the invasive species
Cats also kill for entertainment. Kaia got out one time for about 2 hours and piled up 10 lizards and 2 birds in the yard.
I don’t know that you can equate dog poop with bird kills by cats. One happens all the time as a necessity, but surely cats aren’t out there killing birds all the time. They have other things to chase, they have places to go, things to smell, stuff to eat that’s easier than birds. Then there’s all that sleeping to do, that thing that needs to be knocked off onto the floor, you get the idea.
Poop, cats are doing that everywhere. A lot more than killing birds, I reckon. Like I said, I’m a learner. I love finding out I’m wrong, it means I’m not wrong anymore.
Freeroaming house cats successfully kill approximately 2 small game animals a week. That’s a 104 kills a year, 1560 kills in a lifetime of 15 years. Lets say they stay indoors during their kitten year. With 90 million pet cats in the US that’d be a killrate of 90 000 000 000 small game animals a year, if they were all allowed outside.
Yeah there’s definitely a disconnect here. It’s obviously much worse in the US and as there’s no scientific evidence to link cats to declining bird numbers in the UK, I didn’t think there would be such a big difference.
I stand corrected on that and thanks for adjusting my knowledge.
Does it really need to be researched and peer reviewed before the fact that your cat, allowed outside, will be an invasive species that will kill small game animals that wouldn’t otherwise have been killed, and that that is one of many reasons to keep it indoors?
Yes, if there are few enough, the impact won’t be consequential, but humans making decisions assuming such things is why our streets are covered in cigarette butts and why we have to have trash cans along forest trails.
Even if the situation in the UK is fine, just that idea in itself can cause things to quickly become not fine, as a thousand people can each think to themself “one more cat won’t be a problem” while together adding a thousand cats to the environment, not one.
You forgot the risks of spreading feline diseases and parasites.
Are you saying outdoor cats in the UK are just as long lived as indoor ones, and don’t do any irreparable environmental harm? I don’t think the stats will back you on that one.
Which part of all this is supposed to make letting your cat outside seem fine? You basically made list of reasons to keep a cat indoors if you care for its health, but started off with “it’s fine if you have a garden” which makes no sense. Unless it’s enclosed in a cat-proof way?
Don’t listen to them OP. Share your cat with your neighbours.