Coyote feeder

The alternative would be to not get a cat at all, unless it can go outside without being in danger or causing damage to the ecosystem.

It depends on where you live. If you live in a city without predators, then letting your cat go outside in the backyard gives them a very exciting experience. If you live somewhere with coyotes, then your cat is going to die.

That's good, in that sense your yard is essentially acting as an enclosure. Unfortunately most cats don't only stay in the back yard, and in those cases the owner should either cat-proof their yard to keep the cat inside it, or keep their cat inside their home unless walking them on a leash.

I think it depends on where you live. Where I live there's not as many owls because everything is just grassland/prairie, so lots of farms still have farm cats for pest control, but I do think it's ideal to go without if you can.

Yeah, okay. So much less cruel to just trap and kill them all. Unless you've got a secret cat utopia where they can all go to.

The problem is there already. People adopting and keeping them indoors is not the problem.

A real solution would be better laws and enforcement involving cat breeders and people who let cats roam and reproduce freely. Or all the assholes around the time COVID lockdowns who figured they could just adopt temporarily and then abandon their pets.

Name one place where cats wouldn't be invasive lol

Most domestic cats do just fine indoors.

If you're in an environment where cats are not natural and are invasive

There's no such thing. Cats are a domesticated species, they aren't native to anywhere. Their ancestors were possibly native to the fertile crescent in Syria and to ancient Egypt (among a handful of other places they're believed to possibly have originated from, it's hard to pin down), but even if only people in those places ever owned cats, if they let them outdoors all the time it would still be bad for the environment and cause issues. So instead of expecting something completely unreasonable, like the rest of the world no longer keeping cats as pets, let's stuck with something reasonable, like not letting cats roam freely outdoors.

Keeping cats indoors isn't any more cruel than keeping dogs indoors. You can leash train a cat, or let them out in a cat-proofed back yard, just like we can with dogs. Cat territory size is dependent on availability of resources, they don't have an innate need to wander large distances as a species. Some individuals might have some wander lust sure, but that's what leash training is for. Take them on hikes, you don't have to put them outside unsupervised with the racoons and coyotes and cars and vulnerable bird species.

Outdoor cats have half the lifespan of indoor cats for a reason. The dead cats I regularly see on the side of the highway on my way home from work certainly aren't happier than my neighbour's cat is walking around on a leash alive and healthy. If you learn how to provide proper exercise and enrichment for your cat either indoors or under supervision/on a leash then you don't need to let them outside unsupervised. If you want your cat to be both happy and safe, then there are plenty of options that are better for both your cat and the local ecosystem. This is something we naturally expect of dog owners, there's no reason why we can't do the same with cats.

House cat sized cats aren't natural to anywhere are they? I thought they were bred smaller over many many years.

/c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world - opens in your local instance

!microblogmemes@lemmy.world - opens in it's home instance

I think it's a meme, but the proliferation of this exact format is why they created c/microblogmemes. Otherwise meme communities become like 70% screenshots of text.

Just ignore them. I thought it was funny

a meme is anything i find funny

my cat is a meme

who needs replication and proliferation of a specific idea

Interesting concept but cats don't have the sapience to understand the risk involved with being outside. You could say the same thing about children, but because adults know better we don't let them do whatever they please.

Honest question, how do you keep a cat indoors at night? We used to call them, but sometimes they wouldn't show up. That meant you might see them the next day, or never again. One little poofy grey cat we had disappeared for a week before turning up soaking wet and meowing frantically. Cats are quick and can make pretty good distance from your house, so when you're calling them in for the night, they could be literally anywhere. They also like to hunt at sunset, so might just ignore you on purpose.
That's my experience anyways. I think some of the other comments here are right, that a limited outdoor space that they could enjoy but not escape from would be ideal. I don't have a yard so my cats are indoor only. I did try to leash-train the smarter one but she was not having it.
edit: we would clang their food dishes and shake the food bags. Calling them in for the night was also feeding time. My experience was that despite this they wouldn't show up sometimes.

They make dog doors that only open if the animal has a fob on their collar. Would let the dogs out but keep the cat in.

Honestly that's really shitty dude. You should figure out how to keep the cat indoors

Not all places in the world have coyotes. Some places are safe for cats. I don't have cats, but there are several out-doors cats where I live that seems to be doing just fine.

Feral cat populations are created and maintained by outdoor non-feral cats. Lots of people who don't keep their cats indoors also don't get their cats fixed either.

then we should set out a bunch of coyotes,
to keep the feral cat population in check.

what could possibly go wrong?

It's almost like cats and dogs are different animals or something.

I agree cats shouldn't be let out roam freely like that anywhere and anytime but it's better cats than dogs. Cats in general are smaller and less aggressive to humans. Like how many large dogs you could find in 100 dogs and how many big cats you could find in same amount of cats?

Do you know the difference between being taken for a walk and living outside? It doesn't sound like you do

Alright then, people should be allowed to let their dog be free so they can live as dogs.

Also, people aren't allowed to adopt cats anymore and house cats need to be exterminated on the American continent and in Oceania.

You know... So cats live as cats historically did?

Or, or, or -- instead of doing that fucking absurd thing you suggested to try to ignore the valid points other people are making, we deal with them the same way we deal with other ecologically disastrous invasive species.

Suggesting or thinking that this issue only applies to cats in USA / North America is uninformed at best.

Australia has ~650 million lizards killed each year by feral and outdoor cats, ~225/cat

As of 2013, Canada has 100-350 million birds killed by cats each year

As of 2021, China estimates based on public survey's that "1.61–4.95 billion invertebrates, 1.61–3.58 billion fishes, 1.13–3.82 billion amphibians, 1.48–4.31 billion reptiles, 2.69–5.52 billion birds, and 3.61–9.80 billion mammals" there each year"

Cats and other vermin are absolutely destroying native populations in New Zealand as all of the birds there evolved with essentially no native predators.

South Africa, Cape Town alone estimates that 300k cats kill 27.5m critters each year

This is not unique to the states. Keep your cats inside.

Reads like the chaotic stream of consciousness of a four year old

Had to read twice and go a few steps back every now and then

"Who cares if its legible" set my brain up to expect satire and I failed to properly interpret the rest of the sentence it to think message weren't a verb but noun.