Feel free to unfollow me right now if you believe itâs okay to endanger your house cat or the local native fauna it absolutely will kill by allowing it outside unsupervised/off lead.
Outdoor cats have a lifespan of 2-5 years. Indoor cats regularly live 15+, even getting up to 20+ sometimes. Unsupervised indoor-outdoor cats often donât make it past 5 and the ones that do are a very lucky exception. Why?
They get hit by cars. They get attacked by other animals (predators or other pets like dogs) including other cats. They eat things that are toxic to them. They get killed by other humans. They contract diseases like FIV and FelV.
Even if your cat DOES live longer than 5 years, cats that go outside are responsible for the deaths of billions of birds and other small fauna per year. There have been studies done on this. Itâs not people pulling stuff out of their asses, itâs something scientists literally studied and reported results on. Donât believe me? Google âdo cats kill wildlifeâ and have a read. Theyâre on the IUCNâs list of worst invasive species and have contributed to the extinction of 60+ species, and they continue to cause a problem for other threatened species of small animals.
If you think itâs okay to expose your cat to these hazards and potentially cut its lifespan by more than half, if you think itâs okay to allow your cat to kill native fauna to indulge itâs ânatural instinctsâ instead of, I donât fucking know, playing with it with toys literally designed to allow it to safely indulge those instincts, then you have no business following me.
Iâm not here to indulge your whimsy about how cats âneedâ to be outside unsupervised to be stimulated and lead a happy life- I can assure you, they donât. There are p l e n t y of enrichment devices and structures people can buy or make to ensure that their cats lead happy, full lives indoors to the ripe old age they are supposed to lived to.
You also have the option of lead training your cat if you really believe they need to go out. This is something that proponents of âlet cats go outsideâ ignore almost completely. They somehow believe that itâs all or nothing- either the cat lives 100% indoors without ever seeing sunlight OR itâs let outside without supervision where it can be injured, killed, or cause harm to the environment. Those arenât the only choices. Cats adapt to leads very easily. They donât like it the first couple of times, usually, but also usually when they figure out lead=outside, they get over it and the best of both worlds gets to happen- your cat remains safely under your supervision where it cannot come to or deliver harm, and it gets to go outside.
TL;DR Letting your house cat outside unsupervised is extremely dangerous both for your cat and the local wildlife and people arguing otherwise can see themselves out the door because Iâm not about people endangering animals out of willful ignorance. You, along with every other pet owner out there, have a responsibility to protect your pets to the best of your abilities, and choosing not to do so in some misguided attempt to indulge their whims is poor animal husbandry. Any argument to the contrary is just an excuse to continue doing things which put animals in danger.
prguitarman
andulkaphoto
dailybridgerton
pixelskylines
