ufo tofu

Over the course of running this blog, we have received a few messages about outdoor cats bringing home wild snakes. So, while this is certainly not the first post to bring up the issue, it bears repeating that outdoor cats are extremely damaging to the environment. 

A number of studies have shown that outdoor cats, along with feral cats, kill billions of native birds, mammals, and reptiles and have even contributed to or outright caused the extinction of entire species. While some, like the Lyall’s Wren, are and were particularly vulnerable due to their limited range, outdoor cats pose a significant threat everywhere. You probably live within the range of an endangered, threatened, or protected species without even knowing it. 

Next, if you read the link, you’d see it actually sites as many nineteen other studies for one parameter, which is more than “a very small amount of studies”. Plus, even forgoing the article, there are well-documented cases of entire species being killed off by cats. I even linked one in the same post.

You’re right in that endangered species are threatened because of humans. Introducing nonnative species is one way that happens. Cats are the example here, but there are loads of others. Feral and outdoor cats are an anthropogenic cause of ecological harm.  

So, are domestic cats harmful to the environment? Absolutely. They are introduced species. They are not native. They kill loads of prey animals which in turn can also harms producers (because their numbers may now go unchecked) and predators (because they now have fewer prey animals to eat). Thus interrupting the entire ecosystem. 

I’m mostly responding to this because I’m confused by the aggressive tone. I didn’t call for extermination programs in my original post. I didn’t even advocate for T&R. All I asked was that people who let their cats out stop doing that. I even pointed out that doing so is potentially dangerous to the cat. Your tags say I’m putting the blame on the cats, but I never demanded anything of cats in the post - that would be pointless - I asked humans to stop letting them out. 

Also, it’s pretty clear you haven’t read much of our blog because we point out constantly that humans are harming the environment in other ways. So your tag call-out to “try accusing more humans of hurting the environment” is pretty pointless. 

You seem to be under the impression that we hate cats. I can’t speak personally for admin1, but I actually adore cats. I’d probably own one if my partner’s allergies didn’t prevent it. But part of loving an animal, any animal, is recognizing the parts of its existence you don’t like. In this case, that piece to recognize is that cats, when afforded the opportunity by humans, can be extremely destructive to other species and the ecosystem as a whole. 

rest stops on highways

trails by the highway just out of earshot of traffic

schools during breaks

those little beaches right next to ferry docks

your friends living room once everybody but you is asleep

the lighting section of home depot

A lot of these places are called liminal spaces - which means they are throughways from one space to the next. Places like rest stops, stairwells, trains, parking lots, waiting rooms, airports feel weird when you’re in them because their existence is not about themselves, but the things before and after them. They have no definitive place outside of their relationship to the spaces you are coming from and going to. Reality feels altered here because we’re not really supposed to be in them for a long time for think about them as their own entities, and when we do they seem odd and out of place.

The other spaces feel weird because our brains are hard-wired for context - we like things to belong to a certain place and time and when we experience those things outside of the context our brains have developed for them, our brains are like NOPE SHIT THIS ISN’T RIGHT GET OUT ABORT ABORT. Schools not in session, empty museums, being awake when other people are asleep - all these things and spaces feel weird because our brain is like “I already have a context for this space and this is not it so it must be dangerous.” Our rational understanding can sometimes override that immediate “danger” impulse but we’re still left with a feeling of wariness and unease.