That argument is made by a particular group. It’s really important to include the context of when cats are “harmful” to the wildlife. It can only be in a setting where humans have completely modified the environment…**then** you create a scenario where cats become just another pest species. It should go without saying that when the anti cat people get all the feral cats eliminated…then many other pest species with a different set of problems come back. What it comes down to is which pest species you prefer.
Anyways…that’s all off topic because this post was about a cats being eating by coyotes….which are also both pest species. But from experience in a setting where you have pest weasels, raccoons, skunks, weasels, foxes, etc…it’s preferable to have cats…because if you don’t have enough coyotes a skunk is going to move under your house if you don’t have a cat. It’s all the weird version of the animal kingdom that humans create around us.
It can only be in a setting where humans have completely modified the environment…then you create a scenario where cats become just another pest species.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. But, like most suburbs do in fact host some songbirds- especially during migration. Parks, wooded areas, etc. Cats don’t really care if it’s a suburban park or a shitty nature preserve that apartments maintain because they bought the land but it’s wetlands (and set it up as a sort of “we bait deer and racoons and shit so your kids can catch rabies and other exciting diseases pet them.”
There are very, very few places that humans haven’t modified in some way. and I’m not sure they even exist at all.
There’s peregrine falcons that hunt doves in downtown minneapolis (and they’re super fun to watch if you can catch them. Animals can and do adapt to humanity’s bullshit. feral cats are more of that bullshit.
Cats should absolutely not be let out. it’s not safe for the cat (Coyotes, owls. diseases. cars. Just getting stuck. and enviromental exposure.) and it’s not safe for other wildlife (songbirds, rodents. etc,)
Not a lot to disagree with here, except your conclusion is really out of place.
Those falcons don’t really hunt doves…they mostly hunt imported pigeons…and that’s not a unique thing…I live in Canada where we have far more exciting prey birds in every city.
Anyways. People in cities get really weird about focusing on things that really aren’t significant…this kind of reminds me of wind turbines killing birds. Sure…it’s true…but neither cats nor wind turbines could possibly threaten birds. What threatens birds more profoundly is driving a gas vehicular or subscribing to Netflix so you can watch a documentary about how evil cats are. Or…living in a city in the first place.
I could wax philosophical and wonder if it’s a general aversion to witnessing predation that makes people anti cat…but it’s probably just people who have bird feeders being really loud. Hope you win, and have fun with all the rats…another totally natural species lol.
Sounds rather like you don’t know what you’re talking about and don’t actually have a real argument. Most predatorial birds will take whatever they can without being too picky about it.
Peregrine don’t care if you call it a rock dove or a pigeon, they’ll happily call it dinner. Same as they would any other kind of dove.
this kind of reminds me of wind turbines killing birds. Sure…it’s true…but neither cats nor wind turbines could possibly threaten birds. What threatens birds more profoundly is driving a gas vehicular or subscribing to Netflix so you can watch a documentary about how evil cats are. Or…living in a city in the first place.
Except that cats don’t reduce the overall ecological burden in the way that windmills likely do. That’s a complex topic and I’d say irrelevant.
I could wax philosophical and wonder if it’s a general aversion to witnessing predation that makes people anti cat…but it’s probably just people who have bird feeders being really loud. Hope you win, and have fun with all the rats…another totally natural species lol.
I rather doubt you can, actually. Seeing as your entire arguments so far have been whataboutisms and dismissive personal attacks. Uninspired ones at that.
I’m not anti cat so much as I am “anti-letting cats out.” But you seem to think that being “anti” is a bad thing. It’s not. It’s just semantics. I’m also “anti-letting rats run free” too; and for the same reasons.
Cats also don’t generally go after actual rats, either. They tend to go after mice and voles and other smaller (and safer,) rodents, so the “cats kill rats” isn’t really a good argument either. (Also small lizards, bugs and other smaller critters in general.)
There’s better ways to deal with rats that don’t affect native rodents (or other native wildlife) in the way cats do. And letting cats out to hunt is dangerous for the cat on several fronts.
My argument is you’re spending way too much energy thinking about outdoor cats, which are irrelevant to the larger argument of harm to the environment.
It’s a distraction from the problem that humans themselves pose to the environment…you’d get a lot more bang for your buck and the cat problem would take care of itself it if you were less materialistic, for example.
If you think you’re doing a goddamn thing by keeping your cat indoors, while at the same time running on the hamster wheel on consumerism…I have news for you.
How much energy I spend on something is irrelevant to this conversation. You’re welcome to walk away any time if you feel you’re spending too much.
My argument is simple:
it is not safe for the cats.
there are better, more effective, less expensive, and less impactful methods
cats are harmful to the environment.
Your arguments are basically “nuhuh” and anti-consumerism screeds that belong elsewhere, and are rather a bit hypocritical considering you have to be engaging in some level of commerce just to be having this “conversation”
Noting you say about consumerism is all that relevant. That doesn’t change anything about three points, and any criticism you’re going to make about humanity being awful also doesn’t change those three points.
I could go on about decision theory, but humanity sucking or another irrelevant whataboutism doesn’t matter here. Those things will remain the same regardless of if you or anyone one else lets the cat out or not. A billionaire is going to do billionaire shit regardless.
I’d really like to see where you get these facts. I am not awa of any species that went extinct because of cats specifically, and I never saw a cat with a territory of more than a few hundred meters radius.
The home ranges of male feral cats, which are generally two or three times larger than those of female cats, are on average under 10 ha (25 acres), but can vary from almost 300 ha (740 acres) to under 1 ha (2.5 acres).
I’ve personally witnessed one of my cats well over a mile from home back when they were allowed outside.
I don’t give a shit about cats…insofar as they’re only useful if they can survive long enough to kill mice for me.
My interest in this topic is fleeting…I think it’s amusing that some city people believe that cats are on any list that’s important. Be an anti materialist…you’ll save a lot more “wildlife”.
They have been implicated in the extinction of several species and local extinctions, such as the hutias from the Caribbean, the Guadalupe storm petrel from the Pacific coast of Mexico, and the Lyall’s wren from New Zealand. In a statistical study, they were a significant cause for the extinction of 40% of the species studied.[15] Moors and Atkinson wrote, in 1984, “no other alien predator has had such a universally damaging effect”.[14]
In a global 2023 assessment, cats were found to prey on 2,084 different species, of which 347 (or 16.5%) were of conservation concern.
House cats are an invasive species. They reproduce quickly and are very effective hunters. They are absolutely a recognized threat to local ecosystems.
This isn’t some zero sum thought exponent where you “win” if you can find me some edge cases. What else do you think was involved with these extinctions? Do you think maybe it was a bunch of people showing up with a bunch of bullshit and destroying everything, perhaps? Yeah…we’ve destroyed things 10000 different ways…I’m sure cats were high in that list once or twice.
You’re kind of skipping the elephant in the room if you make cats the bad guy instead of human nature. All you’re doing is treating a symptom and you’ll save approximate 0% of the environment (rounded the the closest %) of you go on an anti-cat crusade.
Pretty much. To me it’s such a “boutique” opinion to get outraged about how dangerous cats are…without any context or consideration for the context in which cats exist in the first place.
Like…it’s akin to a first world problem…a bunch of people saw a documentary about cats, felt that they had some measure of power to deal with cats…and haven’t considered any of the major problems created by routines that they participate in that actually mean something.
Yes, cats are terrible. But killing all the owls (another commenter brought this up) and putting up all the bird feeders that gave the cats so much easy “prey” is also worth considering.
The weird thing is the OP is about cats getting killed by coyotes…who are a much more dangerous pest species (in the contexts that they’re eating cats) than the cats.
I’m definitely overthinking this…but my angle is I’m a rural person who has livestock and rodent problems. A much different scenario to somebody who lives in an apartment and got radicalized by some amateur birder who hates cats because they don’t want to leave the city to see birds
lol. That’s right. We’re going to show up and terrorize you. Make you eat tofu and crunchy granola.
There are better, more effective and less expensive methods of control that don’t harm native life nearly as much. But given your a rural farmer raising livestock, you’re insistence cats aren’t that bad is rather telling. Though I’m uncertain as to why you’re unwilling to educate yourself about more modern controls… quite literally better for your bottom line.
This “educate yourself” nonsense is rich…given you didn’t engage with anything I said.
I’m an off grid subsistence farmer and an anti-materialist. It’s exactly because I “educated myself” that I’m out here. Cats are pretty fucking low on the list of harm the humans cause to the environment…they only exist as a “problem” in fake environments created where humans mass together.
Humans are an invasive species, and many of the species that cats kill are also invasive.
My comments are criticizing the notion that cats are somehow uniquely or critically dangerous. If it were up to me I’d get rid over all the imported species, including humans.
Cats are dangerous to birds that show up at bird feeders because humans killed all their natural predators like owls. It’s not a huge issue…it’s a symptom of a much larger problem.
I wholeheartedly agree that humans are invasive, but one need only look at a place like New Zealand to see how one of homo sapiens’ most environmentally-damaging qualities is that it brings other invasive species with it. Treating birds at bird feeders as if they’re all invasive is deeply reductive and objectively wrong. Animals migrate in some cases hundreds of miles in a day.
Cats are universally deeply invasive once feral, and humans letting those cats (and dogs) get out has been the primary threat to the wildlife of New Zealand. Not humanity itself. This is almost universally true on any island, from islands that have been completely taken over by rats, to the Spaniards’ tendency to leave behind feral hogs that outcompete even the most deadly of predators within a couple generations. But in only one case does everyone treat this like it’s some endearing quality: outdoor cats.
Just because there’s a much bigger problem doesn’t mean that the small one doesn’t exist. That’s just whataboutism. ALL of these need to be dealt with, but you know which one is the easiest to tackle FIRST? (Hint: it’s not the pigs)
I never treated all or any birds at bird feeders as invasive. I said that they have no predators because we killed them all. I haven’t seen any data on how many birds a cat can kill vs an owl…I suspect an owl is more effective. I haven’t seen any data that suggests that cats are threatening any bird populations.
It just sounds like something that need to be managed…and we should consider something other than the cute birds we want at bird feeders.
Humans brought rodents, and killed their predators. Are cats killing more rats and mice than a weasel could? Unlikely.
Some edge case about a cat wiping out a bird population on an island 100 years ago doesn’t interest me.
Note that while domestic cats are unlikely to venture far, they don’t need to, as native birds fly into residential neighbourhoods without issue. Regardless, they are between 10 and 100 times more effective at killing wildlife than a comparable predator such as a weasel or owl.
Yeah, it doesn’t. Despite you using the term “wildlife”, there’s nothing wild about the habitat of cats. If cats lived in a place with natural predators and without humans protecting them, there’d be barely any cats.
I get it…you’re an anti-cat crusader. You got radicalized about a minor problem amidst all the major problem of human behaviour destroying habitat and wiping out species. I empathize…I hate invasive species, including humans.
I propose that you do something meaningful, like opposing materialism as a lifestyle, rather that getting outraged about some boutique issue. Sure, if it comes up, don’t own a cat or encourage people to get one if you don’t have livestock.
That argument is made by a particular group. It’s really important to include the context of when cats are “harmful” to the wildlife. It can only be in a setting where humans have completely modified the environment…**then** you create a scenario where cats become just another pest species. It should go without saying that when the anti cat people get all the feral cats eliminated…then many other pest species with a different set of problems come back. What it comes down to is which pest species you prefer.
Anyways…that’s all off topic because this post was about a cats being eating by coyotes….which are also both pest species. But from experience in a setting where you have pest weasels, raccoons, skunks, weasels, foxes, etc…it’s preferable to have cats…because if you don’t have enough coyotes a skunk is going to move under your house if you don’t have a cat. It’s all the weird version of the animal kingdom that humans create around us.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. But, like most suburbs do in fact host some songbirds- especially during migration. Parks, wooded areas, etc. Cats don’t really care if it’s a suburban park or a shitty nature preserve that apartments maintain because they bought the land but it’s wetlands (and set it up as a sort of “we bait deer and racoons and shit
so your kids can catch rabies and other exciting diseasespet them.”There are very, very few places that humans haven’t modified in some way. and I’m not sure they even exist at all.
There’s peregrine falcons that hunt doves in downtown minneapolis (and they’re super fun to watch if you can catch them. Animals can and do adapt to humanity’s bullshit. feral cats are more of that bullshit.
Cats should absolutely not be let out. it’s not safe for the cat (Coyotes, owls. diseases. cars. Just getting stuck. and enviromental exposure.) and it’s not safe for other wildlife (songbirds, rodents. etc,)
Not a lot to disagree with here, except your conclusion is really out of place.
Those falcons don’t really hunt doves…they mostly hunt imported pigeons…and that’s not a unique thing…I live in Canada where we have far more exciting prey birds in every city.
Anyways. People in cities get really weird about focusing on things that really aren’t significant…this kind of reminds me of wind turbines killing birds. Sure…it’s true…but neither cats nor wind turbines could possibly threaten birds. What threatens birds more profoundly is driving a gas vehicular or subscribing to Netflix so you can watch a documentary about how evil cats are. Or…living in a city in the first place.
I could wax philosophical and wonder if it’s a general aversion to witnessing predation that makes people anti cat…but it’s probably just people who have bird feeders being really loud. Hope you win, and have fun with all the rats…another totally natural species lol.
You know that pigeons are a type of dove, right?
Sounds rather like you don’t know what you’re talking about and don’t actually have a real argument. Most predatorial birds will take whatever they can without being too picky about it.
Peregrine don’t care if you call it a rock dove or a pigeon, they’ll happily call it dinner. Same as they would any other kind of dove.
Except that cats don’t reduce the overall ecological burden in the way that windmills likely do. That’s a complex topic and I’d say irrelevant.
I rather doubt you can, actually. Seeing as your entire arguments so far have been whataboutisms and dismissive personal attacks. Uninspired ones at that.
I’m not anti cat so much as I am “anti-letting cats out.” But you seem to think that being “anti” is a bad thing. It’s not. It’s just semantics. I’m also “anti-letting rats run free” too; and for the same reasons.
Cats also don’t generally go after actual rats, either. They tend to go after mice and voles and other smaller (and safer,) rodents, so the “cats kill rats” isn’t really a good argument either. (Also small lizards, bugs and other smaller critters in general.)
There’s better ways to deal with rats that don’t affect native rodents (or other native wildlife) in the way cats do. And letting cats out to hunt is dangerous for the cat on several fronts.
My argument is you’re spending way too much energy thinking about outdoor cats, which are irrelevant to the larger argument of harm to the environment.
It’s a distraction from the problem that humans themselves pose to the environment…you’d get a lot more bang for your buck and the cat problem would take care of itself it if you were less materialistic, for example.
If you think you’re doing a goddamn thing by keeping your cat indoors, while at the same time running on the hamster wheel on consumerism…I have news for you.
How much energy I spend on something is irrelevant to this conversation. You’re welcome to walk away any time if you feel you’re spending too much.
My argument is simple:
Your arguments are basically “nuhuh” and anti-consumerism screeds that belong elsewhere, and are rather a bit hypocritical considering you have to be engaging in some level of commerce just to be having this “conversation”
Noting you say about consumerism is all that relevant. That doesn’t change anything about three points, and any criticism you’re going to make about humanity being awful also doesn’t change those three points.
I could go on about decision theory, but humanity sucking or another irrelevant whataboutism doesn’t matter here. Those things will remain the same regardless of if you or anyone one else lets the cat out or not. A billionaire is going to do billionaire shit regardless.
You’re rearranging the deck chairs on The Titanic. If it makes you feel better, knock yourself out.
House cats have literally been responsible for the extinction of several species. Their roaming territory can be a several mile radius.
They are absolutely a major threat to local wildlife regardless of human changes to the area.
I’d really like to see where you get these facts. I am not awa of any species that went extinct because of cats specifically, and I never saw a cat with a territory of more than a few hundred meters radius.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_cat
I’ve personally witnessed one of my cats well over a mile from home back when they were allowed outside.
Cats haven’t made anything go extinct, don’t be silly. You’re likely talking about that one cat on that tiny island.
Cats don’t live near wildlife…or they’d get killed by predators.
I like how confidently incorrect you are.
Hm? I’m perfectly correct. Figuratively :)
I don’t give a shit about cats…insofar as they’re only useful if they can survive long enough to kill mice for me.
My interest in this topic is fleeting…I think it’s amusing that some city people believe that cats are on any list that’s important. Be an anti materialist…you’ll save a lot more “wildlife”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife
House cats are an invasive species. They reproduce quickly and are very effective hunters. They are absolutely a recognized threat to local ecosystems.
This isn’t some zero sum thought exponent where you “win” if you can find me some edge cases. What else do you think was involved with these extinctions? Do you think maybe it was a bunch of people showing up with a bunch of bullshit and destroying everything, perhaps? Yeah…we’ve destroyed things 10000 different ways…I’m sure cats were high in that list once or twice.
You’re kind of skipping the elephant in the room if you make cats the bad guy instead of human nature. All you’re doing is treating a symptom and you’ll save approximate 0% of the environment (rounded the the closest %) of you go on an anti-cat crusade.
Lots of claims from you in here about being personally fine with allowing invasives into your area, but is there any researched evidence for it?
I never said I was “personally fine with invasive species” you’re projecting.
Looks like he’s just trying to steelman the things you say into something that is at least logically defensible.
Someone gets it
Pretty much. To me it’s such a “boutique” opinion to get outraged about how dangerous cats are…without any context or consideration for the context in which cats exist in the first place.
Like…it’s akin to a first world problem…a bunch of people saw a documentary about cats, felt that they had some measure of power to deal with cats…and haven’t considered any of the major problems created by routines that they participate in that actually mean something.
Yes, cats are terrible. But killing all the owls (another commenter brought this up) and putting up all the bird feeders that gave the cats so much easy “prey” is also worth considering.
The weird thing is the OP is about cats getting killed by coyotes…who are a much more dangerous pest species (in the contexts that they’re eating cats) than the cats.
I’m definitely overthinking this…but my angle is I’m a rural person who has livestock and rodent problems. A much different scenario to somebody who lives in an apartment and got radicalized by some amateur birder who hates cats because they don’t want to leave the city to see birds
Radicalized?
lol. That’s right. We’re going to show up and terrorize you. Make you eat tofu and crunchy granola.
There are better, more effective and less expensive methods of control that don’t harm native life nearly as much. But given your a rural farmer raising livestock, you’re insistence cats aren’t that bad is rather telling. Though I’m uncertain as to why you’re unwilling to educate yourself about more modern controls… quite literally better for your bottom line.
This “educate yourself” nonsense is rich…given you didn’t engage with anything I said.
I’m an off grid subsistence farmer and an anti-materialist. It’s exactly because I “educated myself” that I’m out here. Cats are pretty fucking low on the list of harm the humans cause to the environment…they only exist as a “problem” in fake environments created where humans mass together.
deleted by creator
Your room-temperature IQ is showing.
Such nuance.
Such a lack of intelligence.
Insults are the perfect argument. You win.
Tell me you cannot even conceive of an “invasive species” without telling me you are incapable of understanding that basic concept.
Feel free to read and respond to my comment rather than lob insults.
If the concept of an invasive species is an insufficient response in your eyes, then I maintain that my prior response is not insult, but observation.
Humans are an invasive species, and many of the species that cats kill are also invasive.
My comments are criticizing the notion that cats are somehow uniquely or critically dangerous. If it were up to me I’d get rid over all the imported species, including humans.
Cats are dangerous to birds that show up at bird feeders because humans killed all their natural predators like owls. It’s not a huge issue…it’s a symptom of a much larger problem.
I wholeheartedly agree that humans are invasive, but one need only look at a place like New Zealand to see how one of homo sapiens’ most environmentally-damaging qualities is that it brings other invasive species with it. Treating birds at bird feeders as if they’re all invasive is deeply reductive and objectively wrong. Animals migrate in some cases hundreds of miles in a day.
Cats are universally deeply invasive once feral, and humans letting those cats (and dogs) get out has been the primary threat to the wildlife of New Zealand. Not humanity itself. This is almost universally true on any island, from islands that have been completely taken over by rats, to the Spaniards’ tendency to leave behind feral hogs that outcompete even the most deadly of predators within a couple generations. But in only one case does everyone treat this like it’s some endearing quality: outdoor cats.
Just because there’s a much bigger problem doesn’t mean that the small one doesn’t exist. That’s just whataboutism. ALL of these need to be dealt with, but you know which one is the easiest to tackle FIRST? (Hint: it’s not the pigs)
I never treated all or any birds at bird feeders as invasive. I said that they have no predators because we killed them all. I haven’t seen any data on how many birds a cat can kill vs an owl…I suspect an owl is more effective. I haven’t seen any data that suggests that cats are threatening any bird populations.
It just sounds like something that need to be managed…and we should consider something other than the cute birds we want at bird feeders.
Humans brought rodents, and killed their predators. Are cats killing more rats and mice than a weasel could? Unlikely.
Some edge case about a cat wiping out a bird population on an island 100 years ago doesn’t interest me.
100 years ago? Really? Why are you assuming I’m talking about the past? Educate yourself.
Also, here’s a scientific study completely disproving your unfounded suppositions
Note that while domestic cats are unlikely to venture far, they don’t need to, as native birds fly into residential neighbourhoods without issue. Regardless, they are between 10 and 100 times more effective at killing wildlife than a comparable predator such as a weasel or owl.
Yeah, it doesn’t. Despite you using the term “wildlife”, there’s nothing wild about the habitat of cats. If cats lived in a place with natural predators and without humans protecting them, there’d be barely any cats.
I get it…you’re an anti-cat crusader. You got radicalized about a minor problem amidst all the major problem of human behaviour destroying habitat and wiping out species. I empathize…I hate invasive species, including humans.
I propose that you do something meaningful, like opposing materialism as a lifestyle, rather that getting outraged about some boutique issue. Sure, if it comes up, don’t own a cat or encourage people to get one if you don’t have livestock.
You are right. It’s why many cities will release neutered feral cats to handle large rat populations.