a ten page research paper I wrote for Engl 102 on why you need to keep your fucking cats indoors
Pet Cats: Great for Homes and Hearts, Bad for the Outdoors
Domestic cats (Felis cattus) need to be kept indoors.
Written with the intention of being sent to M County legislature to push for leash-laws to protect cats and our environments.
December 13, 2018
My brother and I have always been animal lovers. I cannot keep mammals or birds because of allergies, so I have kept a variety of scaly animals over the years instead. David, my brother, has never suffered from allergies, but decided to wait until he was done with college and financially independent before getting a pet. Two years ago, he and his wife, Ali, went to a foster agency to adopt a small, grey cat named Salt. I was over the moon with excitement. I knew David and Ali were going to provide this timid little thing with everything she could ever want, and that their lives would be enriched by her presence. However, I had one worry: would they keep Salt as an indoor-outdoor cat, like Ali’s mother keeps hers? They told me I did not need be concerned; the New York foster agency they adopted her from actually required them to sign a contract promising to keep her indoors-only. I was incredibly relieved. Simply put, domestic cats (Felis cattus) should be kept indoors. Despite others’ opinions, keeping your cat outdoors is bad for your cat and harmful for the environment. M County legislature has precedent to and should enact leash-laws to prevent free-roaming pet cats.
Some people think cats should be allowed outside for a number of reasons, and I used to agree with them. One of the biggest beliefs is that cats need to roam. A 2011 study by researchers at the University of Illinois found that male feral cats have territories with an average size of almost 217 acres in the summer (Horn). Another belief is that cats need the exercise and stimulation that comes with being allowed outdoors. Many cat owners claim their pets would be bored if they were cooped up inside all day! Cats are smart animals that need a chance to run and explore to prevent them from becoming depressed or overweight. Finally, some people let their cats outdoors as a way of controlling pests. Cats in barns and breweries are great at keeping pest animals away from stores of grain or food for humans. However, most of these beliefs do not hold up under scrutiny.
The idea that cats need to roam is, at its core, untrue. The cats with the aforementioned 217-acre territories are males looking for mates and food during the most active part of their year, and thus have the biggest average territories of any season, sex, or interaction with humans. Even with all this taken into consideration, their territory size is still only about a third of a square mile. Female feral cats have territories a third of the size of their male counterparts, and both male and female pet cats only roam about two acres when allowed outside. Well fed cats that do not need to hunt do not need to roam. Even if your cat is very active and wants to go outside, there are plenty of ways to keep your kitty exercising and entertained indoors. Salt used to be a feral wandering around New York City, but has adapted beautifully to living in a tiny shoebox apartment because she has toys, attention, and climbing structures. The same Illinois study as mentioned above found that pet cats only spend about 3% of their time moving - so if you can keep your cat entertained for about 45 minutes of the day through attention or objects to play with, your cat has plenty to keep his mind going and stimulated. The one claim I cannot refute is that cats are among the best ways of keeping pest animals away from food. If you attempt to poison pest animals, you could risk poisoning the native scavengers or predators that eat them. Lethal traps can lead to slow, painful deaths or can be ineffective if the pest simply stays away from it. Live traps can also be avoided by pests, and require fairly significant upkeep. However, the risks that come with keeping cats outdoors can easily negate the benefits of letting your pet cat outside.
This summer, I watched drama unfold on social media as London police zeroed in on the infamous “Croydon Cat Killer,” who had been active since 2014. People were terrified to let their cats outside as some psychopath was out there waiting to catch and maim their beloved pets. Some 400 pet deaths, most of them cats, were attributed to this criminal. Londoners sent petitions to the police urging them to use DNA analysis on the corpses to help with the investigation. Police spent four years working with veterinarians, the RSPCA, and animal welfare groups to find the culprit, which they unveiled to the public in September 2018: motor vehicles and local predators. No human was out there deliberately killing pets. Cats simply wandered into traffic and got hit, then were scavenged by foxes and vultures. Sometimes, foxes got the cats before the cars. What is truly remarkable about this story, however, is the fact that this is not the first time such a phenomenon has occurred in London. In the ‘90s, “Operation Obelisk” sought to capture the individuals who were purportedly killing and decapitating pet cats and rabbits for satanic rituals, only to be called off as investigators realized that the killers were, again, vehicles and local predators (Askwith). While these are obviously sensationalized cases, the fact of the matter remains: cats allowed outdoors have shorter lifespans than cats kept indoors. Your cat is much less likely to be hit by a car in your living room than sunbathing on nice, warm asphalt. The coyote population that has established itself in the M County area over the last 30 years is going to have a much harder time getting at your cat through your windows than if she were outside exploring. It is important to note that it is not just that the environment is dangerous for pet cats; pet cats are dangerous to the environment.
To be able to unpack the idea that cats are dangerous for the environment, I feel it prudent to discuss the history of the domestic cat. Roughly 9,000 years ago, when civilization was beginning to flourish in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, some intelligent individuals of the wild cat species Felis sylvestris realized that humans effortlessly attracted some of their favorite prey species. Around the same time, some intelligent individuals of the hominid species Homo sapiens realized that having Felis sylvestris around reduced the amount of food stolen and spoiled by pests. Eventually, these enterprising Felis sylvestris individuals began to naturally select for traits preferred by humans, the most important of which is tameness. A series of morphological traits seem to present when a species is bred for a tame disposition, including coat color, ear shape, and tooth and brain size, which Darwin dubbed “Domestication Syndrome” (Wilkins). Eventually, these tamed Felis sylvestris became so different from their wild counterparts that they became an altogether separate species. Today, we know them as our beloved pet cats, Felis cattus. Humanity, almost as a whole, fell in love with these little predators and they accompany us everywhere. There are now invasive, self-sustaining feral colonies on every continent excluding Antarctica.
We love cats because they are cute, cuddly, and clean, but humans take them with us everywhere because of their excellence as hunters. As stated previously, we still have yet to find a way to remove pests from food storage areas that works as well as a working cat. Our little furry friends are skilled hunters, with a hunting success rate often reaching 70%. In comparison, some studies have found Bengal Tigers to have a hunting success rate as low as 5%. Even female lions, working together to bring down a kill, succeed only around 30% of the time. Part of what makes domestic cats great for humans to have around, especially in the era before mousetraps, is their willingness to hunt even if they are well-fed. A study in Great Britain found 986 indoor-outdoor cats brought back 14,370 prey items in a six month period (Woods). 91% of these cats brought back at least one prey item, with an average of 11.3 items per cat. It is important to note that this study was conducted via questionnaire, which leaves a gaping hole in the data collected: this study only recorded kills brought back and noticed by the owner, and fails to account for kills eaten outside of the home, unnoticed by the owner, or simply not brought back. The actual amount of prey items caught may be much higher. Part of this is because cats hunt anything that moves. This can be beneficial for a small wild predator that needs any source of calories they can get their little paws on, as well as entertaining for cat owners with a laser pointer. Woods’ study, mentioned previously, recorded 66 identified, distinct species killed by cats, with 39 less-specific findings (Passer domesticus compared with “bird egg,” for instance), and 191 individual unidentifiable prey items. These kills cover 10 different classes of the taxonomic kingdom Animalia, proving that cats are not picky about what they hunt. Unfortunately, our cats’ hunting habits cause massive damage to the environment.
Feral cats hunting on islands are responsible for 14% of all recent recorded animal species extinctions (Medina). One notable example is Tibbles the Cat and the Stephens Island Wren (Harvey). According to fossil records, the flightless wren was once populous throughout New Zealand and its surrounding islands, but human disruption and artificially introduced, invasive animals wiped it from every island except one. Stephens Island is small and fairly remote, and was home to a lighthouse built in 1891. In 1894, lighthouse keeper David Lyall decided to bring his pet cat Tibbles with him to the island, where he let her explore. Soon, she was regularly bringing back the corpses of small, brown birds, which no one could identify. Lyall, an amateur biologist, sent the specimens back to England where they were eventually declared a new species by the British Ornithologists’ Union. However, by the time the news travelled back to Lyall, Tibbles had stopped bringing back the little brown birds. By 1897, just three years after Tibbles moved onto the island, the wren was extinct by her paw. It is true that this is somewhat of an extreme case, and M County is not a remote island with unique endemic species. However, domestic cats in the United States kill an estimated 14.7 billion birds and small mammals per year (Loss). Our county is home to a surprising amount of endangered species that can easily fall prey to domestic cats, ranging from the Regal Fritillary to the Eastern Mud Salamander. Beyond hunting animals to extinction, cats also damage wildlife populations by being vectors to some serious and disruptive diseases.
One of the most dangerous diseases known to mankind is the rabies virus. While the disease is carefully monitored by the CDC, and there has been fewer than 40 reported human rabies cases in the past decade within the United States, the disease has no cure and is guaranteed lethal by the time symptoms appear, usually three weeks to three months after infection. Thankfully, vaccines have been proven effective if taken within two weeks of suspected exposure, but they have a reputation for being unpleasant. Unfortunately, rabies can occur in any mammal, including cats. In 2015, 244 cats tested positive for rabies within the United States, appearing 3.6 times more frequently in than dogs. This is largely due to the amount of time cats are allowed to explore unsupervised, where they may encounter a rabid animal without their owner’s knowledge. This trend continues in M County: our local government reports, “There have been several rabid cats in [M] County over the last 5 years.” Rabies can occur in any mammal, but cats are the specific host for two other diseases.
The bacteria Bartonella henselae is so closely linked to cats that the colloquial name for an infection is “Cat Scratch Disease.” Technically, B. henselae is not carried by the cats themselves, but by Ctenocephalides felis - a type of flea that prefers to live on domestic cats. Transmission to humans typically occurs when a cat with B. henselae-infected flea feces on their claws scratches someone. B. henselae infections are not usually lethal, but they are unpleasant - which is not surprising, as another bacteria in the Bartonella genus is responsible for Trench Foot, an infection that affected some 70,000 allied troops in World War One. B. henselae is unlikely to destroy your limbs, but it is likely to cause painful sores or lumps near the site of infection, swollen lymph nodes, and fever. According to the CDC, some 12,000 outpatients are diagnosed with Cat Scratch Disease per year in the United States, and an additional 500 individuals are hospitalized for the infection per year (Nelson). Unfortunately, little is known about the effect of B. henselae on North American wildlife, but we do know more about the next cat-specific disease.
Toxoplasma gondii is a eukaryotic parasite that requires domestic cats to complete their life cycle, but can infect any warm blooded animal. It is also considered one of the most common parasites in developed nations, and researchers at the University of Cornell estimate upwards of 60 million Americans are affected (Kornreich). In healthy individuals, T. gondii infections rarely have clinical symptoms. However, immunosuppressed and young cats may develop a condition called Toxoplasmosis in their central nervous system, eyes, liver, or lungs. Cats with Toxoplasmosis in their CNS or eyes can have a good prognosis if they respond quickly to antibiotics, but cats with Toxoplasmosis of the liver or lungs typically have a much lower chance of survival. Infection in humans is fairly similar, as the majority of those infected never show symptoms. However, immunosuppressed or young individuals may develop flu-like symptoms and occasionally severe complications such as seizures and pneumonia. What T. gondii is most famous for is its bizarre neurological effects. Studies have shown that rats infected with T. gondii experienced reduced predator aversion (Berdoy). This behavior has incredibly negative ramifications in environments the parasite is introduced into. Wild prey species show reduced risk-avoidance behavior, leaving them open to predation by both cats and other predators. Alarmingly, some studies have linked T. gondii to increased risk-taking in humans, among other neurological and behavioral changes, although the scientific community has yet to come to a conclusion as to the definitive link between the two (Sugden). Still, the question stands: how do we limit our cats’ exposure to these diseases?
There are several ways we can protect our cats and, by extension, ourselves and our environment. The rabies pre-exposure prophylactic vaccine in cats works very well. We can limit our cats’ chances of encountering B. henselae-infected fleas by regularly applying anti-flea medications. However, the best overall way to avoid your cat becoming infected by any of these is to keep your cats indoors. The CDC recommends keeping your cat inside as the best preventative measure for all of these conditions. If they have limited access to areas where they could contract these conditions, it follows that they would be incredibly less likely to become infected. By protecting our cats, we also protect ourselves and our environment. While bats, not cats, are the most common vector for rabies in humans, eliminating rabid cats in our area will only keep us safe. If we remove cats from the environment, we remove both B. henselae and T. gondii as both of these pathogens indirectly or directly need domestic cats to complete their life cycle. Preventing our cats from free-roaming will reduce the frequency of these diseases - perhaps drastically.
I hope I have convinced you so far to keep your own pet cats indoors, but we in M County need to go farther than this. We need legislature to protect our cats, our environment, and ourselves from individuals who insist on letting their cats roam even in the face of overwhelming scientific opposition. We already have our “at large” laws for cats, which state they are “at large” if outside of their owner’s property and not responsive to vocal commands. However, this does not necessitate cats to be supervised at all times off their owners property like dogs are. Essentially, this makes the law pointless for preventing cats from wandering into traffic, getting into fights, or otherwise becoming hurt. We need to regulate cats like dogs are. So if we know the government has the legal precedent to regulate cats, why have we not?
The simple answer to this is misinformation. As stated earlier, people believe cats need to roam. When I discussed what topic I was considering writing about with my father, a highly educated man, he actually laughed at my insistence that cats needed to be kept indoors because he had always been taught that cats should be let outside. We need to educate our people and prevent cats from wandering without supervision. Introducing leash laws for cats within M County will save cats’ lives, keep us healthier, and protect our environment.
Bibliography
In Order of Reference
Horn, Jeff A., et al. “Home Range, Habitat Use, and Activity Patterns of Free-Roaming Domestic Cats,” The Journal of Wildlife Management, Vol. 75, No. 5, The Wildlife Society, July 2011, Pp. 1177 - 1185.
Askwith, Richard. “The Cat Flap,” Independent, August 1999. www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-cat-flap-1109954.html
Wilkins, Adam S. et al. “The ‘Domestication Syndrome’ in Mammals: A Unified Explanation Based on Neural Crest Cell Behavior and Genetics,” Genetics, vol. 197, no. 3, Genetics Society of America, July 2014, Pp. 795-808.
Johnson, Christopher N.; Jones, Menna E.; Legge, Sarah; McGregor, Hugh. “Feral Cats Are Better Killers in Open Habitats, Revealed by Animal-Borne Video,” US Library of Medicine and NIH, 2015, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4545751/.
Davies, Ella. “Which Animal is the Deadliest,” BBC, 2015. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151222-which-animal-is-the-deadliest-hunter-on-the-planet
Woods, Micheal, et al. Domestic Cat Predation on Wildlife. The Mammal Society, 1998.
Medina, Felix M., et al. “A Global Review of the Impacts of Invasive Cats on Island Endangered Vertebrates,” Global Change Biology, 17, 3503-3510, 2011.
Harvey, Chelsea. “The Crazy Story Of A Cat Named Tibbles Who Killed Off A Whole Species Of Bird,” Business Insider, Dec 2014. www.businessinsider.com/tibbles-the-cat-and-stephens-island-wren-2014-12
Loss, Scott R., et al. “The Impact of Free-Ranging Domestic Cats on Wildlife in the United States.” Nature Communications, 29 Jan. 2013, doi:10.1023.
“Rabies.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, The Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, 24 Sept. 2018
“Understanding Rabies,” M County Animal Services & Adoption Center, 2018.
Nelson, Christina A., et al. “Cat-Scratch Disease in the United States, 2005–2013.” Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol. 22, No. 10, The CDC, 2016.
“Feline Bartonellosis”. European Advisory Board on Cat Diseases, abcdcatsvet.org, August, 2018.
Kornreich, Bruce. “Toxoplasmosis in Cats.” Cornell Feline Health Center, Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, June 2018, Ithaca, New York.
“Toxoplasmosis.” MayoClinic.org, Mayo Clinic, 2018.
Berdoy, M., et al. “Fatal attraction in rats infected with Toxoplasma gondii.” Proceedings. Biological sciences Royal Society (Great Britain), Vol. 267, 2000, Pp. 1591–1594
My name’s Charlie, I’m a working nineteen year old who identifies as a transgender man. Part of what I experiance is gender dysphoria, which for me manifests into a physical and mental discomfort with my body. Over the years to combat this I have been wearing a binder, which presents the appearance of a flat chest. Unfortunately, there are medical side effects to this, one of the more common ones being severe back pain which in these years has warped my spine. To move on from using a binder and to help reduce my chronic back pain, as well as my dysphoria, multiple doctors have suggested that I undergo surgery that will give me a flat chest. This surgery would improve my overall quality of life.
This is where my gofundme comes in. Top surgery is, unfortunately, not a cheap process, the surgeon I met with has given me a ballpark of $8,000. Unlike many others my age, I am 100% financially independent. I am not in a position where I can easily save money as I live paycheck to paycheck. Working 40+ hours a week I am working to pay as much as my bills allow,however, if I continue saving the way that I am I will not be able to get surgery for far longer. My dysphoria and chronic pain does not account for this, and I fear that if I continue binding every day that my spine will warp further.
Anything helps in this process, and I truly am grateful for even those who read this. Donate if you can, otherwise please share. Thank you.
Bohemian Rhapsody. We Will Rock You. Somebody To Love. All hit singles, and all the direct product of a band that was formed when an astrophysicist and a dentistry major found a new friend in an art college, who then went on to recruit a fourth member from the electronics school. Based on this alliance I propose the rift in society between Arts and STEM students was fabricated to keep us separated so as to dilute our true power - and fabricated by who, you may ask? The business major, the only member of society who reaps no reward from art and science and thus must weaken us so as to stay ahead. In this essay I will
Have I told y’all about my husband’s Fork Theory?
If I did already, pretend I didn’t, I’m an old.
So the Spoon Theory is a fundamental metaphor used often in the chronic pain/chronic illness communities to explain to non-spoonies why life is harder for them. It’s super useful and we use that all the time.
But it has a corollary.
You know the phrase, “Stick a fork in me, I’m done,” right?
Well, Fork Theory is that one has a Fork Limit, that is, you can probably cope okay with one fork stuck in you, maybe two or three, but at some point you will lose your shit if one more fork happens.
A fork could range from being hungry or having to pee to getting a new bill or a new diagnosis of illness. There are lots of different sizes of forks, and volume vs. quantity means that the fork limit is not absolute. I might be able to deal with 20 tiny little escargot fork annoyances, such as a hangnail or slightly suboptimal pants, but not even one “you poked my trigger on purpose because you think it’s fun to see me melt down” pitchfork.
This is super relevant for neurodivergent folk. Like, you might be able to deal with your feet being cold or a tag, but not both. Hubby describes the situation as “It may seem weird that I just get up and leave the conversation to go to the bathroom, but you just dumped a new financial burden on me and I already had to pee, and going to the bathroom is the fork I can get rid of the fastest.”
I like this and also I like the low key point that you may be able to cope with bigger forks by finding little ones you can remove quickly. A combination of time, focus, and reduction to small stressors that can allow you to focus on the larger stressor in a constructive way.
#I’m so completely unsurprised by all of this#it’s like#they’re desperately trying to heave water back out of the boat#but instead of using buckets they just drill more holes and hope the water runs back out on its own
me: “The entrance of my hometown has a shrimp boat sitting in the main street. At Christmas theres a shrimper Santa and alligators pulling him instead of reindeer.”
vaporwave
titsay
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
dededos
izzy806
