Cats everywhere!

[GoldfinchFeather]

Since we have plenty of threads to moan about dogs and dog owners, how about a bit of balance and a thread for the same about cats?

I, for one, am not a fan of the things and think there are too many around. And sure, while the problems they cause may be less obvious than dogs/dog ownership, I personally think they're worse in many ways. Particularly for the terrible effect they have on local wildlife and birds in particular.

On numerous occasions I've had the misfortune to come across birds and animals that have clearly been attacked by cats. One distressing incident occurred just a few weeks ago - on an evening walk I came across a domestic cat that had just attacked a tiny baby wild rabbit. Despite shooing the cat off and it still being alive when I got to it, it didn't survive.

Seeing that made me just want to go and give the bloody thing a boot up the backside.

Yet many cat owners seem to find this behaviour either a mildly amusing part of their cat ownership ("you'll never guess what my Tiddles caught the other day!"), or have no qualms about letting their cats roam freely and slowly kill all wildlife within a several mile radius. When really, they should just be kept indoors.

And if they were, there'd be far less of them that were always going bloody missing or being stupid enough to get themselves run over on the road.

Surely I can't be alone in my hatred of cats?!

If people started neutering their cats instead of letting them roam about unneutered then the feral cat population might actual start to decline instead of the insane amounts of colonies and cat being born on the streets. That one you saw may actually have been a feral and is just trying to survive. So far just one little rescue I follow has neutered 300 cats this year that’s basically 2 a day these are majority street cats and kittens born to them!

I only recently found out my mum had a cat as a kid - 85 years later - this as they didn’t have it as a pet but as a pest control agent, as was common. Farms still have them. So we should have used them for this, then stopped the rise of the cat?
It is sad when they torment and kill a small animal - but better than a small child, which they don’t do.
No, they’re not trained but some dog owners do train their dogs to kill small animals - lamping is still a ‘thing’ - fortunately they can’t use cats.
I think there are bigger problems facing the local wildlife than the local cat but maybe when all else is resolved we can think about stopping cats - and let the mice, rats roam far and wide as well as the birds. Nature has its own chain for balance and predators are part of that tbh though not pesticides and other man made issues.
It’s ok to not like cats (though weird to me!) but not ok to want to hurt an animal for following its instincts- do you want to hurt the fox who steals the eggs? The hawk that takes the baby rabbits?
I think there will be more sanctions against dogs/dog owners before cats and then everyone will realise cats rule and it’s cats’ rules!

I am a dog lover rather than a cat lover . Always have, always will.

That said, I don't dislike cats and wouldn't wish harm on any !

Your point about wildlife is extremely valid . My parents have a dog and where they exercise him (near a river ) there are signs about water voles nesting on the river bank and dogs to be kept on leads so as not to disturb them.
A guy whose garden backs on to the river pointed out that it is in fact the cats that disturb / kill them !

Dog owners - easy targets ?

I agree on the wildlife point but at least you aren’t inundated with cats everywhere you go. Also cats don’t need walks and can spend all day alone . They are clearly superior creatures!

I'm assuming your a rat/mouse person

You are wrong and it’s disturbing to hear someone talk about wanting to kick an animal.

Since when do a large proportion of dog owners pay attention to anything that requires them to keep their dogs on a lead.

I tawt I taw a puddy tat, I did I did!

I couldn't disagree more.

I have a hidden disability and adopting my cats has done more for my recovery and general wellbeing than any medication or therapy I've ever tried. When I walk in from work they greet me at the door purring (and no, it's not because they're hungry, DH feeds them before I get back) and they are very affectionate with us. I'm currently recovering from surgery so have been off work and in bed a lot, and they have barely left my side since I got home from hospital.

I also have two DC with SEN who find the presence of the cats extremely calming and therapeutic. When DD has a meltdown she is always exhausted afterwards and just lies face down on her bed for about an hour. Without fail, one or both of the cats will go and cuddle up to her

To my family, they are the very opposite of "useless".

The "animals" doing the most damage to birds are humans if we didn't fuck up their habitat and food supplies cats could go at them all day and not make much of a dent in the not so distant past we had

Domestic pigeons not wild
Gulls were mostly seagulls not land gulls

How much of a knock on effect has the increase in the bigger birds gave do you think? I have the benefit of memory my grandparents lived in the road behind where I currently live forty years ago it was full FULL of small birds great flocks of swifts on the phone wires making them bend everyone had cats or dogs forty years later hardly any cats loads of dogs many more houses massive reduction in small birds we have pigeons and gulls magpies and other big birds and a big rat and mouse problem

Exactly, my two are incredibly therapeutic and bring immense joy to our family. It’s very arrogant for any mammal to call another animal useless 😍

Note to cat lovers, there is a cat show in Birmingham NEC on the 13th September 🥰

I presume you hate humans most of all, @Goldfinchfeather, given our murderous instincts and destruction of the planet? Not sure why it’s the cats you hate, tbh - they would eat their prey if hungry enough.

And I assume you also hate foxes, as their instinct is to do what is known as “surplus killing” - ie what you hate cats for. In fact, it is highly likely to be the case that half the time you are blaming a cat for something, it was killed or dug up by a fox.

Reading this thread, it's clear that most disagree that there are too many cats.
I adore cats, and admit that I do overlook their predatory tendencies. As others have said, humans are much worse.
Herbie here isn't a fan of other cats,
especially on his territory.

@GoldfinchFeather might also be interested to know that birds of prey have also been known to indulge in surplus killing and “playing” with their prey. Those horrible old birds, eh?

I love my cats and their lives are greatly enhanced by going outside, plus they get more exercise. I would never want to shut them in and shrink their world unless there was a medical reason why they couldn't go outside.
One cat doesn't really catch anything. The other one catches a lot of mice but rarely birds. He chases squirrels but has never caught one.
I try to rescue the cute mice but usually cannot. However, there are hundreds of mice and rats around here and before my cat rats came inside the house when the door was open and also in neighbouring houses. Mice were in the shed and rats were in the compost bin. People then poisoned them anyway.

Mine haven’t caught anything ever, they love hunting things including us though 😂

My cat is also not useless or uncaring. I was quite ill last year and she stayed in my room with me all the time while I was stuck in bed. As did the dog!

I understand the point about the wildlife, but it's their natural behaviour. My cat stays indoors and will occasionally venture out into the garden, so she's not endangering the wildlife... Plus she's just so cute and fluffy

Neither of mine catch birds. The 16 year old never hunted and the young one only brings in rats and mice which she kills. We live round the back of a farm and we'd be over run with rats if it wasn't for her.

It really does depend on the cat. I have had only one pedigree, a male British shorthair, and to my knowledge he never killed anything apart from bluebottles in his whole 13 years. He did come running with a bird in his mouth once, but on closer examination it had been dead for days and he was probably just trying to impress us.

Cats are not part of society. They have neither rights nor obligations. They don't prescribe to our moral or legal code. As the most violent, destructive creature on the face of the earth by far, I don't believe humans have the right to impose our values on other species.

Nothing with this face deserves to be criticised.

Cats aren't 'nature'. They're domesticated animals doing damage to the environment.

Huge difference between animals that kill to eat in the circle of life, and those that kill for no reason at all. Cats DON'T need to kill to eat - they're pets, they're fed.

And excusing it as their 'nature' is such a lazy argument.

Vilifying an animal doesn’t change the fact that humans are the worst, especially humans that want to kick an animal, that’s just fucked up, and yes we all know you didn’t do it but the desire was there and it says so much about you.