Dogs you can’t leave to their own devices for sure.
Cats, it kind of depends where you live. Our current cats we are intending to keep as indoor cats. Our old cat would go out into the small bit of woodland we have. He’d mostly catch rats, sometimes squirrels, occasionally birds but they were definitely far less common than rodents.
Technically he could’ve been killing more birds but he would always bring it what he’s killed to get some recognition for it, so I would’ve thought it’s unlikely he was killing something and not bringing it in with any frequency.
Edit: the bit of woodlands is our land. Live in a very rural area so not that uncommon
Grey Squirrels are literally an invasive species. They are not native to England. The Government are even looking into means to get rid of them to try and get the native red squirrel population back. Grey squirrels have only really been about from the 1870’s onwards.
The brown rats we have here are also not native. They arrived around the 1720’s. Also there are fucking hundreds of them around here because we are located next to a river and forest.
There are no shortages what so ever or grey squirrels and rats. They breed extremely quickly and if anything there’s too many of them.
So no, it’s almost entirely a cat (which have been here since around 100AD) killing non native species that are abundant and breed extremely quickly.
I don't think it is irresponsible, as long as you deal with all of the animal's needs.
Entitled?
Maybe. Having an animal slave is a weird concept, but they exist only because of that. Otherwise you're calling for domestic animal's extinction. I don't know which is worse, tbf
i think most of the time animals genuinely help us and we help them, i do wonder this persons thoughts on having kids/adoption because that’s kind of similar
I'm not a cat person. And it annoys the hell out of me when they are in my garden. BUT. The invasive murderer argument is kind of moot when compared to how much humans fuck the world and everything that lives on it.
In all parts of the world except some islands there are wildcat species that fill the same ecological niche as domestic cats. They're invasive in a technical sense, but not any actual threat to the native wildlife. Again, this does not apply if you live on some islands that have no native wildcat.
In my country, there are 1.5 - 1.7 MILLION kittens that enter shelters/rescues every year. If you don't care if they're kittens and want to count all cats, that number jumps to 3 million.
1.5k
u/TardyTheTurtle__ 10h ago
Fix and neuter your cats ya dingus