:kitty-cri-screm:
try not to re-litigate this, but if you think anonymously threatening to murder someone else’s animal is cool and fine, you can fuck off
Further down in the thread lots of people are agreeing that they would shoot the cat :ohnoes:
OUTDOOR CATS DESTROY LOCAL ECOSYSTEMS
My outdoor local ecosystem of skunks, raccoons, rats and squirrels are flourishing. Are cats killing that many birds? I don’t have a cat, but my neighbor’s cats killed a couple birds so the neighbor put little bells on all the cats so they can’t sneak up on shit anymore.
Domestic cats that regularly go outside have rather large territories they’ll patrol. The transition from housecat to stray to feral comes with pretty distinct physiological changes too, cats are only ‘cute’ when theyre inside and figuratively defanged, killer instincts relegated to attacking hair bands and odd socks.
The story might be different elsewhere, but aus straight up doesn’t have a lot of predators, so cats can readily escape and find themselves comfortably at the top of the food chain, to the horror of our marsupial brethren
Are cats killing that many birds?
This article says they’re “likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals” (which I personally doubt, I’d say modern agricultural practices is much higher, but still, it shows it’s significant). Yet at the same time the same article also says the majority comes from un-owned cats, not pets.
the neighbor put little bells on all the cats so they can’t sneak up on shit anymore
It works, but only decreases about 41% of killings (the little bastards learn to hunt by silencing the bell, lowering their jaw to stop it tingling).
We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually.
What in the ever loving fuck??? Where did they get these numbers? I didn’t read the whole paper but I couldn’t find it scanning.
Yeah, it’s a highly debated estimate. To be honest part of it I think is the desire to attribute the massive collapse of birds population to another cause than the main one: our modern agricultural practices killing insects in tremendous amounts, depleting their food source (see this article or this one for example). I still think outdoors cats kill a significant amount of a depressingly decreasing population of many species, so keeping them indoors can only help.
Suburban “ecosystem”
There are still impacts to be had that aren’t meaningless, especially on migrating birds and the like which wouldn’t be as impacted by something like a suburb simply existing.
Also just because this one might be suburban (there’s really no indication it is) it is a fact that outdoor cats can decimate ecosystems
