this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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While I understand the sentiment, its a hard line. I waffle with it being sometimes impossible to avoid.
With that said, my parents have an outdoor cat still going from my middle school days; he's currently 23 y/o, and still able to hold his own. I'm always impressed visiting because I expect to hear he passed when in fact he's yelling about wet food not being available when he's makes his appearance. Most of his days are spent laying on their back porch, and I'm insanely jealous of how full and long of a life he's experienced.
There is no situation where it is impossible to avoid. I'm glad your cat has had a good life, but in general, outdoor cats are still far more likely to die young to diseases, accidents, and wildlife.
It is far from impossible to avoid. If you can't control a cat and keep them indoors then you shouldn't have a cat. It's as easy as that.
If you have a kid and let them run in the road, no one will accept your excuse that it's just too hard. You either shouldn't have had a kid or you need to take responsibility for them, or have them taken from you. The same applies to a cat.
I'm a waffler from way back, and the wording in that sentence I waffled on the "right" description for where I fell into.
Since being in my own and having multiple days, I don't think it's completely impossible for me. I let our cats out with our supervision so they can roll in the grass and enjoy the outdoors; then, we bring them right back in.
My parents never want to get rid of cats, so if any of them were not able to "properly behave" indoors they would be put out as a barn cat. Was it wrong to do that? To them, they're still caringv and care for the cat, they just didn't like its behavior. This also was in a small town where going to the pound likely meant kill shelter.
To date, they've rescued around 15 cats from off the street, and about 3/4 stayed in the house.
Nuance and all that jazz.
They aren't bad people for it. They're just ignorant (not an insult, it just means they don't know something) of the harm cats do. Their intent is good, but you can still do bad things with good intentions.
It would be better that they go to a kill shelter. I know that sounds callous, but why is it worse that the cats are put down rather than letting them kill a bunch of other animals? There's death both ways. They just ignore all the death the cats cause.
Devil's advocate: humans cause an excess of death beyond that of cats: is it better to put humans down to prevent them from causing mass death?
I'm not disagreeing that they cause harm, but its a philosophical argument of utilitarianism that deaths of a subset would be better no matter what, right? It's a nuance that can't necessarily be put to black and white contexts. That's all I wanted to put forward, but I may have messed up my argument trying to distill to a sentence or two.
Maybe, though at least humans can make an effort to minimize their harm, and some can actually do good. Cats can't really do this.
Sure, but again things are dying either way. More things are dying with the cats living outdoors. What makes a cat more valuable than a bird, or tens of bird, or hundreds of birds (or mice, or whatever else)?
The only moral framework that I could think would justify this is hedonism, if the cats bring them happiness and that's all that matters.
Well in that analogy tge drives also need to take responsibility
Just close the door lol
There is nothing hard to avoid about your cat staying indoors. Stop it.
Agreed that it's not empirical data
Exactly. It might be hard to keep a cat inside literally 100% of the time, but that's not an excuse. My cat has run out the door or knocked out the window screen a couple of times and been outside for a few hours before we noticed and caught her, but that certainly doesn't make her an "outdoor cat!"
I mean, not everyone who smokes is gonna get cancer, but no one is gonnna say that smoking doesn’t have risks. Same with outside cats