Cats banned from going outside in Australia, could it happen here?

[JamBiscuitBun]

I'm interested to hear thoughts on this. Article here I can't ever see it working in the UK. I also remember Australian farmers having apocalyptic mice problems on some of their farms, so I'm not sure how this fits in with that. Though there are many people who'd love to never have the neighbour's cat pooing in their garden again. What d'you think?

Our son has indoor Siamese , they have a catio to go outside , floor to ceiling poles , wall walk ways as well as the usual cat trees / beds and they also have lots of time spent on entertaining them . Indoor cats will not catch on in this country because most people won’t want to put the effort in as they see cats as easy to care for animals / less of a commitment than dogs .

I know. I'm sure the little feathery bastards see me park and then do a fly past!

Heres an interesting article from the guardian 2018 the guardian ‘is it right to end cats right to roam’
two sides of the argument
opinions and science from RSPB
Songbird Survival
and P Baker a mammalogist from the university of Reading

It seems even the professionals don’t agree.

Counter argument: It might make things worse.

We already have a problem in the UK with people very fiercely fencing off their little bits of land. Cat proofing isn't going to help that.

Hedgehogs have a massive problem with people building secure fences around their land. It's far better for them if people leave a few slats or holes so they can get in and scavenge. But we don't like that - it doesn't look neat, and it certainly won't keep cats in.

Hedgerows are massively helpful to birds. My garden has a massive amount of trees and bushes bordering it. But you can't cat proof around a tree so they'd need to get the chop, and it would be actively dangerous to a bird to get into a cat proofed area anyway as they might not be able to get out.

What British birds are struggling for is habitat. Our need for order is killing them. Fake grass, tidy lawns, swept leaves, monoculture. Adding more little squares of land neatly cordoned off and off limits to them is likely to make things worse not better. If you want to help birds the absolute best thing you can do is let a bit of your garden go wild.

I also remember Australian farmers having apocalyptic mice problems on some of their farms, so I'm not sure how this fits in with that.

What difference would a few suburban cats thousands of miles away from the mice plague (that was back in 2021) make?

It often takes a while to get used to leads - and our don't go beyond our property on them - sometime I do think some people take them into quite stressful situations for cats but cats have different personalities so some maybe cope better - though as mellybumps some won't be contained.

I seem to remember a BBC article about Australia putting out humanely killing bait boxes for feral cats - which I though was awful but can't find at minute - so I think attitudes to cats over there probably aren't as welcoming as UK.

That's really interesting, thank you! It feels like it underlines that there is no single answer to this one because the local contexts will vary so much.

Surely far more songbirds for each year due to loss of habitat, farming practices, construction, road building, pesticides killing their food and hunting huge numbers of them-but let’s blame cats!

I have to admit I sometime think this - though having seen My Cat From Hell even when they are routine kept indoors as in USA not all owners put the necessary work in.

Mine would hate this. We kept them indoors from kitten until almost 1 year so they were bigger, but now they go outside ( have 5 years).

One stays around house, garden, local neighbours, but the other leaves at 5am when cat flap opens and won’t come back until midnight or not at all sometimes. We spent 3 years calling them in every evening also, but I can’t get cat 2 back at all now calling or with treats.

We live semi rural.

'I'm imagining me building up the courage to nervously explain to our cat that he's not allowed outside and that it's not my fault honestly'

it's an animal. You don't have to explain anything to it...

I'm interested in what you'd do about the feral cat problem?

From my experience most Australians adore their pet cats - and a higher proportion of Australian households have cats than in the UK (33% v 26%). But they are much more pragmatic about the impact of introduced feral species (not just cats) and the need to tackle them than is my experience of British people where the context is very different. I think it's not that they don't like cats, it's that they do value the native wildlife.

I hope so! I'm so sick of cats taking a shit in my garden. It stinks and the amount of times I've got it on my hands when gardening because they cover it with a tiny amount of dirt. It pisses me right off

Also, not uk here, but houses aren’t really built with fences. We have to allow free access for other animals to pass through, locally that’s deer, hedgehogs etc. So it wouldn’t be that easy to add a ‘cat proof fence’ as there’s no fence

@takealettermsjones

The kind of cats we keep as pets wouldn't exist in the wild if they hadn't become domesticated - the domesticated species evolved about c.12000 years ago in the Middle East. All domestics cats are descendants of those animals - we are not constantly domesticating more wild cats, we're just breeding from one domesticated species and exporting that all over the globe where they are put into competition with the wild animals native to whatever location. There were no domestic cats in most places before humans brought them there. Notably Australia where there were no cats until Europeans arrived, hence why they're such a problem there as they're relatively 'new' to the ecosystem. They are not the same species as wild cats.

If we just stopped breeding and keeping domestic cats now it might lead to a problem with out of control populations of feral cats though I guess! Although I suppose that would be less likely in the uk than other places where there are already lots of feral cats everywhere.

It's about nighttime curfews, not all out of doors cat activity.

It's all part of the same problem though - humans build roads, humans use pesticides, humans own cats.

People persist in framing this as being anti-animal in some way and in taking umbrage on the part of their pet (while the pet is oblivious, being a pet) but it's all about looking at how human behaviour impacts on the environment. Owning a pet is one of those ways.

Yes! I'm sick of having to watch my every step in some areas of my city in case I step in dog shit or trail the pram through it. It's vile. And it's often in parks as well, where children play.

They / we have bait for wild dogs too.
Unfortunately a lot of domestic dogs eat the bait while walking off lead or having escaped their yard, and wind up dead.

In the area where I live, where cats have been ‘inside only’ since 2016, the mindset is, if you love your cat, keep them home. The majority of posts on our local facebook community are along the lines of ‘spotted a cat outside blah blah’ followed by comments about how the owner is cruel to be letting it out unattended etc.

Ironically though, there’s always dogs out and about and it seems to be seen as a total non issue. I know in England if a dog was loose on its own there’d be concern.

I'm interested in what you'd do about the feral cat problem?

Cat and release programs work well- but I can see they have big issues to go to such lengths and they are using many methods of tacking this.

From my experience most Australians adore their pet cats

Where the fuck have I said or implied they don't - that's less a leap and more a fucking rocket launch .

I have said they seem to have different attitude because they face different conditions - which does not seem to be disagreeing at all with what you say.

I thought some councils were doing 24/7?

I thought Canberra's approach looked quite sensible, rules applying to cats born after a set date so that kittens could be socialised as indoor animals from the start while not affecting cats who have been used to an outdoor life and would struggle to adapt.

Yes, I find that I'm often accused of being ridiculous. To help me understand what you're saying - what does 'native' actually mean? If I were to use the same argument about humans I'd be (rightly) condemned.

And yes, cats are not nature's most efficient predator - we are.

And I'd also like to point out that I don't even like cats...

Agreed.

And my cats are indoor only anyway. 🤷‍♀️

Those calling for breeding regulations I’m up for anything that reduces poor welfare breeding of animals (like puppy farms). But it’s really not such a thing for cats as it is for dogs. There are a few pedigrees around - bengals and rag dolls seem to be quite popular. But the vast majority of cats are common moggies of no pedigree. Ours all came to us as rescue kittens, I’d never get a cat that was anything other than a rescue. If they hadn’t been taken in by the various rescues we got them from then they be strays - either dead by now or 100% living off wildlife. I’d support a license scheme for cats that insisted all owners had to chip their cats and get them neutered or register (and pay to be/satisfy conditions for) an official breeder. And I’d happily support a maximum of 2 cats per household if there weren’t so many strays needing homes. There are huge numbers of unneutered strays having kittens every year. Clamp down on this and you reduce wildlife kills.

As a cat owner (whose cat is a good mouser but thankfully terrible at catching birds) I'd agree with all of this.

The problem with night time curfews is.
Cats are not stupid. They get used to routines so if they realise when you call them at 6pmit means an end to their roaming they won’t bother coming in.

Obviously some cats won’t pick up on this and some will.

So the intelligent ones would have to be kept inside.

Hence, it’s not really about a nighttime curfew.