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Is it time to end cats' right to trespass?
(i.stuff.co.nz)
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this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Aotearoa / New Zealand
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I'm in the keep cats indoors camp. Cats live longer, healthier, happier lives if they're kept indoors. We expect other animals to be kept confined to their owner's property (dogs, cows, sheep, lizards, birds, etc) so I don't see why that expectation should not extend to cats.
Given the enormous damage they do to our native ecosystem I think it makes sense. Feral cats are a pest and currently eradication efforts are hampered because we have to take measures we aren't indiscriminately killing pet cats along with the feral ones. If all pet cats could be expected to remain under owner's control, then the options for eradicating the pests go up a lot.
First step though is to require cats to be micro-chipped and registered, just like dogs are.
Isn't that an American stat, based on conditions like coyotes and snow?
Cars, aggressive dogs, fights with other cats, humans who hate cats, toxic garden plants....
None of that produces anything like the American stats though (which tend to say lifespan for indoor cats is 15 and outdoor cats is 3 years).
By contrast, most vets I have talked to put the average lifespan for all pet cats in Aotearoa at around 15, and this tallies with my experience.
The majority of cats in NZ are "indoor/outdoor". We have one of the highest cat ownership rates at about 40% of households.
I myself have owned cats that lived into their 20s.
I think cars and dogs are likely to affect stats a little, but I've never run into any trouble with toxic plants or criminals!
Still, cat's safer indoors or only outdoors daytime. I see lost cat posts more often than I'd like to.
Definitely. Vets especially recommend keeping them in at night, because that's when most of the fighting takes place.
Definitely agree with that, there's no reason every pet cat shouldn't be mircochipped (and most desexed).
I agree the research definitely says cats are better off indoors overall, especially if they also have a catio. I'm not sure whether older cats can easily be transitioned to indoor life. Our cat has a curfew which she adapted to quite easily, but I think if we made her 100% indoors, she would not do well. A catio might help, but wouldn't be the most practical at our place and would be expensive to build.
Our cat was born in a barn and is definitely an outdoor cat. We kept her in as a kitten when we first got her and she definitely went a bit stir crazy. I think it would be cruel to keep her indoors all the time.
Before we had a cat certainly the neighbourhood cats could be annoying but we befriended a few. Humans certainly have a huge sense of entitlement when it comes to ownship of the world and I think it is starting to bite us in the ass.
Except in this case they're only here because of humans, which in my opinion makes them -- and managing their impact on the ecosystem -- our responsibility. It's not really entitlement to want to do that.