this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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"Outdoor cats" are an invasive species that kill billions of animals every year, are a significant contributor to dozens of species' extinction, and live shorter lives than cats properly cared for (i.e. kept indoors) including nearly 3x the risk for infections.
It's a plague. We can't keep normalizing this.
and there's this great news: https://scitechdaily.com/bird-flu-is-now-killing-cats-at-a-90-fatality-rate-experts-warn-it-could-jump-to-humans/
Yeah but birds aren't real.
Thanks tech, did not appreciate the original post b/c of how lightly it treats the killing of wonderful beautiful birbs
"Outdoor cats" are just cats. They are not a domesticated species, hunting is their instinct, and should just not be introduced in places where they wreck havoc to the environment. Where they are endemic (Europe and continental Asia) they don't cause troubles to the ecosystem
As long as you spend time providing your cat proper enrichment to express their hunting instincts, an indoor cat will be just as happy as an outdoor cat.
In my experience it highly depends on the cat. Some are perfectly content with proper scratchers and toys inside, some just visibly suffer staying inside, it might help we are far from the busy city with plenty of green and huntable animals, but most of our cats spend ~80% of time outdoor during summer and ~30% during winter.
put a camera on them if you think they're not killing birds. seriously.
I'm not saying they are not killing birds, or mice, or small preys in general. Cats are predators and amongst the best. What I'm saying is that they are invasive only in places they never were in before human brought them (like Australia or small islands). In continental Eurasia (except areas where they are explicitly been controlled), they have always been there, and the environment is adapted to their presence and will not significantly suffer, not more than any other predator.
ah ok cool
KEEP THEM INSIDE THE FUCKING HOUSE YO.
DO YOU WANT IT TO LIVE?
https://scitechdaily.com/bird-flu-is-now-killing-cats-at-a-90-fatality-rate-experts-warn-it-could-jump-to-humans/
Wrong. Outdoor cats pose a significant risk to birds in Europe as well, especially because Europe has massively reduced the habitat of wildlife in recent centuries.
Cats found 200-500 meters away from any property are shot by hunters in Germany. Between 2007 and 2022 over 160,000 cats were killed in just 5/16 German states (the remaining one's don't publish numbers).
Source? Never heard of that. German sources are fine as well.
That's where the 160,000 deaths number came from. The largest German nature conservation NGO is also quoted as saying cats are a danger to birds.
A single district in Northern Germany has had 660 cats shot within a year. In the dstrict's state 2580 cats were shot in total. Note that the "landesweit" doesn't refer to countrywide but rather to statewide (as German states are called "federal countries").
Those numbers are suspect. https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/02/03/170851048/do-we-really-know-that-cats-kill-by-the-billions-not-so-fast and probably are a majority unowned cats. It's not important to make sure your cat is spayed or neutered than making sure it stays indoors.
What you've presented is a deeply biased opinion piece, and it wears this immense bias on its sleeve. It fearmongers that thinking about cats as killing wildlife could cause "extremism" (it then cites as its lone example a man who suggested banning cats in New Zealand; soooo scary). It cites some organization called "Alley Cat Allies" who call it extremely biased with ostensibly zero credentials. They cite lobbyist and serial sexual harasser Wayne Pacelle formerly of the Humane Society who questions the methodology but even concedes: "We don't quarrel with the conclusion that the impact is big." And lastly, King herself does her own analysis on this meta-analysis' methodology despite being – I emphasize – a professor of anthropology with no background in this field.
So your article has no one familiar with this field who could challenge if these statistical assumptions are actually reasonable. And here, given the authors are experts (and absent some published literature rebutting this in the 12 years since), I have no reason to believe their methodology would be so off as to meaningfully change the idea that "outdoor cats" are severely problematic.
I want you to know that I read through and appreciate this in depth write up and critique of the previous person's source/citation.
Mine was a deeply biased opinion piece, and yours weren't full of emotionally charged imagery and language? OK
Here's the key:
I used scientific sources for (1) and (3) because those are claims people might actually think to contest. Moreover, the NYT doesn't let itself slip into using garbage sources for the sake of its narrative. I could replace this source in two minutes, and then your argument about emotionally charged imagery would dissolve.
The reason I care so much about King's massive bias in that article is because that bias is reflected in how absolutely egregious her sources are. She seems to genuinely not care how factual what she's saying is as long as it conforms to her personal feelings, and so she turns it into assembling literally every source she can possibly find no matter how obscenely flimsy. She's grasping at straws the entire article.