this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
616 points (97.4% liked)
cats
25535 readers
684 users here now
Typical internet cats. Videos, pics, memes, and discussion welcome!
Rule 1) Be kind
Rule 2) Follow the lemmy.world rules
other cat communities
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What do you mean by roam ?
Somehow I get downvoted for asking a clarification. Not everybody is a native speaker, I'm not sure what roam means in this context, so I ask. Look at what OP did, they answered my question very clearly and without judgement.
Walk around the neighborhood. Cats are an invasive species. When I was growing up my neighbor had a paintball gun to shoot any cats that wandered into his yard cause they killed the birds at his bird feeder.
They are normally fine around farms and breweries but that's because they are hunting things like mice that get into grain and such.
Cats should be kept indoors, but moreover your neighbor is a piece of shit and I hope he gets what he deserves. Get a super soaker you fucking monster, shooting someone's pet with something that travels around 200 mph is a bad look. After he baited them at that, I understand that wasn't his intention but the cats are just living by their basic instincts, it's not their fault. If he really was interested in stopping them rather than being cruel humane traps are cheap, just do what normal fucking people do, catch it, drive it 5-10mi, and release it somewhere it's no longer your problem, or drive it to the nearest no kill shelter. But no, can't be a decent human, it's more fun to break their ribs and possibly let them slowly internally bleed to death because they committed the crime of wanting to eat.
I'd rat him out for animal cruelty right now if I knew his name and location.
Found the serial killer in training.
Only a serial killer would protect birds?
Most monsters actually think they are the good guy BTW we know its you
heh whooosh.
Invasive where?
Everyone keeps saying they're invasive, but like... They've been around for thousands of years and were around before we started domesticating them (or they started domesticating us, I guess).
And yes, they kill birds, but then other wild animals also kill other animals.
And yes I realize you're on .ca so probably Canadian, but my point is, everyone seems to assume everyone on the Internet is North American. Plenty of us live in Europe, where cats are sort of a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Yeah but like most invasive species we brought them to places they dont live naturally. Other than a loose dog not much will even bother a cat in North American cities.
Nothing lives in cities naturally. Cities themselves just aren't natural.
Where I come from, outdoors cats really don't have a particularly long shelf life in cities and towns. Either they get hit by a car, or they wander to the forest and find something stronger than them
So how do we know this one is the bad kind or the ok kind?
It's not the kind of cat, it's the location
Do we know the location?
The location is north America, where letting cats roam is hazardous to the environment. Doesn't mean the guy should shoot them but that's why outdoor cats shouldn't be a thing
It's an American thing. Culturally there it's expected that cats are kept indoors, and that any other view is unacceptable.
Whether they are neutered is another conversation
Cats are an invasive species in North America, they destroy avian wildlife.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyall%27s_wren
Cats belong on leashed walks outside, not cooped up inside all day. Treat them like dogs.
Yeah it must be an American thing, we in the UK let our cats roam freely outside and it's totally normal to see cats everywhere.
It's a vestige of our culture war, where the sanctimonious blame individuals for behaviors that were normal in the recent past, heralding a couple data points as supreme truth, while ignoring the broader context and their own hypocrisies. In my opinion, if we are so overpopulated with cats and dogs, such that they cannot roam, people should not have cats or dogs. I'd argue that keeping a cat or dog locked up also makes one an asshole.
The road to extinction is pretty well set, so I don't see the sense in casting ire upon understandable behaviors. Might as well try to get along on the descent, though I get why such a large subset of the population are salty. For the record, I don't have a pet, because: overshoot.
Thats not universally american. Plenty of people in the states let their cats roam. The problem we have is people who think they are rescuing a cat when really they are stealing someones pet
I mean it's an American thing to loudly proclaim that if you do anything other than have an indoor cat then you're an awful person (see original OP of this thread), not appreciating that America is wildly different on this position than pretty much any other country in the world
American here. Clearly it's not a "culturally expected" thing in my neighborhood.