• ZephrC
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    231 year ago

    How bad it is depends on where you live, but yeah, for a lot of reasons most of the world probably shouldn’t have outdoor housecats. As the article you linked pointed out though, most of the damage is being done by feral cats, and well… that cat’s out of the bag, so to speak.

    • @Laticauda@lemmy.ca
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      81 year ago

      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.

      • ZephrC
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        -11 year ago

        Created yes. Maintained not so much. Feral cats can make more feral cats on their own just fine. In fact, outdoor housecats are really bad for feral cats, because they hunt prey, fight for territory, and contribute to overpopulation of small predators without having to deal with the constant dangers that an actual feral cat does.

    • Kerb
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      71 year ago

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

      what could possibly go wrong?

      • ZephrC
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        151 year ago

        Sure, we could try it in Australia first. They love that kind of thing. It always goes great for them.

      • @pagshile@lemm.ee
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        71 year ago

        “So, we set coyotes loose to catch the cats. Then what? We get a wolf to eat the coyotes? Then we get a tiger to eat the wolf!? WHAT EATS THE TIGER, DAD - TELL ME THAT!”

        • @Imgonnatrythis@lemmy.world
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          41 year ago

          I mean you are partially right. Bringing back wolves would help in NA. They are supposed to be a part of the ecosystem and might help keep coyotes in check to a degree at least and would certainly keep killer deer population is n check. They were eliminated more out of fear than legitimate threat and killer deer have now far exceeded human threat compared to wolves.

            • @jerkface@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              Or there is just more predation in the winter, more starvation, or more car strikes; you don’t know it’s the cold

              • @halvo317@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                I don’t understand your point. I’m saying the effects of an inhospitable winter environment does quite a bit of the dirty work for keeping feral cat populations in check. Were you agreeing with me?