How bad it is depends on where you live, but yeah, for a lot of reasons most of the world probably shouldn’t have outdoor housecats. As the article you linked pointed out though, most of the damage is being done by feral cats, and well… that cat’s out of the bag, so to speak.
Feral cat populations are created and maintained by outdoor non-feral cats. Lots of people who don’t keep their cats indoors also don’t get their cats fixed either.
Created yes. Maintained not so much. Feral cats can make more feral cats on their own just fine. In fact, outdoor housecats are really bad for feral cats, because they hunt prey, fight for territory, and contribute to overpopulation of small predators without having to deal with the constant dangers that an actual feral cat does.
I don’t understand your point. I’m saying the effects of an inhospitable winter environment does quite a bit of the dirty work for keeping feral cat populations in check. Were you agreeing with me?
How bad it is depends on where you live, but yeah, for a lot of reasons most of the world probably shouldn’t have outdoor housecats. As the article you linked pointed out though, most of the damage is being done by feral cats, and well… that cat’s out of the bag, so to speak.
Feral cat populations are created and maintained by outdoor non-feral cats. Lots of people who don’t keep their cats indoors also don’t get their cats fixed either.
Created yes. Maintained not so much. Feral cats can make more feral cats on their own just fine. In fact, outdoor housecats are really bad for feral cats, because they hunt prey, fight for territory, and contribute to overpopulation of small predators without having to deal with the constant dangers that an actual feral cat does.
then we should set out a bunch of coyotes,
to keep the feral cat population in check.
what could possibly go wrong?
In Minnesota, we let five months of inhospitable winter do the dirty work for us.
I’ve got bad news if you think cats don’t survive winter… And I’m living in a more northern region too…
It definitely culls our local population.
Or there is just more predation in the winter, more starvation, or more car strikes; you don’t know it’s the cold
I don’t understand your point. I’m saying the effects of an inhospitable winter environment does quite a bit of the dirty work for keeping feral cat populations in check. Were you agreeing with me?