this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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Keeping cats indoors is a rare solution where everybody wins (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I am not here to make the case that cats should be kept indoors for the sake of local wildlife – that case has been made over and over and over and over again. Cat owners know these arguments, and if they have not been persuaded by the fact that cats kill more than 6 million native animals in Australia a day they will not be persuaded by me.

There is a fairly tedious assumption that if you love wildlife you must hate cats, and visa versa. And nothing will turn cat people off faster than encountering a person who hates cats.

I understand this. I also hate people who hate cats. So let’s set the birds and the bettongs to one side for the moment, and consider the other, obvious fact: cats should be kept indoors for the sake of cats.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Most days, when the sun hits that part of the floorboards, our cat Laurie can be found there, lazing in a sunbeam watching the birds through the glass.

The Invasive Species Council responded by calling on the New South Wales government to introduce laws requiring that cats be kept indoors.

She escaped a few times when she was younger, usually making it no more than one body length from the door before freezing in terror at the overwhelming vastness of the outdoors.

Once, when we were visiting my parents’ farm, I clipped her into a harness with the expectation that she would enjoy exploring the yard, but she flattened her robust body to the ground and refused to move.

There was a moment, in our first winter in this house, when we woke to the sound of rats chewing the ceiling, then I wished my old cat Elmo was still alive.

If Nugget hadn’t lost the leg and decided to stick closer to home, I doubt she would have lived past five.

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