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Cats...


wiggyrichard

Love them or loathe them?  

226 members have voted

  1. 1. Love them or loathe them?

    • Love, they're so cute & cuddly!
      146
    • They're shite & should be considered vermin!
      85


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2 hours ago, Rugeley Villa said:

Cats are meant to be let out all year round, unless you raise them as a house cat. Not sure I've heard of irresponsible cat owners, or letting cats run wild.

What do you mean by "meant to be" - because I disagree. They're domesticated animals. They're quite capable and amenable to having some restriction placed on their roaming. They should be restricted - both for their own benefit (e.g. if they live near busy roads)  and for reducing the harm to other creatures (esp. during bird breeding season, for example).

Personally, I'm not keen on neighbours cats crapping in my garden, killing fledglings and small birds in my garden and so on. If someone's dog was to do that we'd be rightly angry - "you've just let your dog crap on my garden and kill birds in my garden" so why is it "meant to be" OK for fecking cats to do it?

I don't want to hurt any animals, but I have to chase cats out of my garden all the time to spare the lives of birds. Like Dave I've got a supersoaker which I keep ready in the summer. Most local cats scarper as soon as they hear my door handle click, now.

People need to treat their cats better and look after them better. 

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Cognitive dissonance innit.

We [society] give them a free pass because it's in their nature.  Which is precisely why they're a problem.  It is their nature, and they're very good at what they do.  Whether the owner acknowledges, or knows, what their cat gets up to has no bearing on what their cat actually gets up to.  But I'd wager; having some knowledge of human nature; that plenty of owners have a fair idea what goes on out of sight, but because the toll is largely unseen/incalculable and little fluffkins gets its daily exercise, then everything's OK and the world keeps spinning, unless you're something smaller and slower.

It goes to show how far 'cute' can get you.  If cats were doing the same damage but looked revolting, they probably wouldn't have had the same path through history that they've enjoyed.

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My neighbour has cats. At least 2.

This means I effectively have cats by proxy. The cats use my garden as their own. Look out of my window and you'll see one of them lay in my garden somewhere, inevitably. This has been joined by constant cat shit. My house has basically become surrounded by the smell of cat shit because my neighbour occasionally feeds something he owns. I don't do much gardening but whenever I do it's just a constant parade of cat shit. 

In recent weeks I've opened my back door to be greeted by half a mouse just left there. That was then followed a few days later by a sequel, a foul smelling vomit hair ball that started a series around the house in the coming days.

Every day and night is punctuated by the bang and clatter of cats clambering over my bins and up onto a gate to get access to my garden from the drive.

Birds have effectively vanished from the garden as well. As I kid the garden regularly had a variety of birds, from pigeons through every form of songbird to sparrows that actually nested in an air brick under the eaves. We had hedgehogs under the shed. In the autumn frogs would appear from somewhere on wet nights. Then we got new neighbours and the area gained cats for the first time, and everything vanished. To be replaced by cat shit.

I don't like cats, and they don't like me, but I don't necessarily have anything against them. My problem mostly is they impose themselves. If my neighbour had a dog, the most I'd know about it was if it barked. But my neighbour has cats, and therefore that apparently means they become my problem as well. That isn't right, to me. I don't have a cat, and I don't want a cat. Why does that mean I need to put up with them?

It's not even like the neighbour has much to do with the things. As far as I can tell they spend no time actually on my neighbours property, besides being fed occasionally seemingly.

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35 minutes ago, Chindie said:

My neighbour has cats. At least 2.

This means I effectively have cats by proxy. The cats use my garden as their own. Look out of my window and you'll see one of them lay in my garden somewhere, inevitably. This has been joined by constant cat shit. My house has basically become surrounded by the smell of cat shit because my neighbour occasionally feeds something he owns. I don't do much gardening but whenever I do it's just a constant parade of cat shit. 

In recent weeks I've opened my back door to be greeted by half a mouse just left there. That was then followed a few days later by a sequel, a foul smelling vomit hair ball that started a series around the house in the coming days.

Every day and night is punctuated by the bang and clatter of cats clambering over my bins and up onto a gate to get access to my garden from the drive.

Birds have effectively vanished from the garden as well. As I kid the garden regularly had a variety of birds, from pigeons through every form of songbird to sparrows that actually nested in an air brick under the eaves. We had hedgehogs under the shed. In the autumn frogs would appear from somewhere on wet nights. Then we got new neighbours and the area gained cats for the first time, and everything vanished. To be replaced by cat shit.

I don't like cats, and they don't like me, but I don't necessarily have anything against them. My problem mostly is they impose themselves. If my neighbour had a dog, the most I'd know about it was if it barked. But my neighbour has cats, and therefore that apparently means they become my problem as well. That isn't right, to me. I don't have a cat, and I don't want a cat. Why does that mean I need to put up with them?

It's not even like the neighbour has much to do with the things. As far as I can tell they spend no time actually on my neighbours property, besides being fed occasionally seemingly.

Are there no effective and legal means by which you can make your garden less welcoming for cats?  Short of owning a German Shepherd or a Super Urinator 3000XL.

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We've got two cats, and yes sometims we see a pile of feathers on the floor and regular rat/mouse parts.

But our garden is still full of sparrows, blackbirds, pigeons, magpies and others. Although cats slaughter by nature, they don't do it 24/7 and most wildlife in our garden is clever enough to avoid them.

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20 minutes ago, BOF said:

Are there no effective and legal means by which you can make your garden less welcoming for cats?  Short of owning a German Shepherd or a Super Urinator 3000XL.

Not that I'm aware of. Nothing works. I believe the lion shit thing is a myth (and even then, putting more shit in the garden seems to defeat the point). Maybe a dog I guess?

As it is I scare them whenever I run into them. I found walking aggressively towards them staring directly at them shits them up.

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12 minutes ago, coda said:

The RSPB sell gadgets which are supposed to get cats to **** off. Don't know if they work. I'd try a super soaker and experiment with different foul-smelling liquids.

A hosepipe with a decent jet nozzle would suffice...I only have to turn the tap on and my pair are scampering for cover

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Over here you can get something from the local pet shop that cats dont like the smell of so they stay away.

You can train a cat to do a lot of things.When one of our cats was really sick we managed to train her to do her thing while we had her on a leash.

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I've only just realised why my cat comes home occasionally, half soaking wet - super soakers. I've been assuming he's been falling in to ponds or something.

I don't really mind somebody doing that to him, if it keeps him out of their garden that's fair enough.

My parent's cat came home one day to an air gun bullet in his side though. It's still there years later, you can feel it under his skin. We're pretty sure we know who it was but we can't know for sure. I'm far from a violent man; I'm a wimp, but if I knew who it was I'd happily punch him on the cheek.

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2 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

My parent's cat came home one day to an air gun bullet in his side though. It's still there years later, you can feel it under his skin.

Probably plastic pellet then?

Central hit with a 12ft/lb rifle and lead pellet, .22 or .177 = Dead cat.

 

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3 hours ago, blandy said:

What do you mean by "meant to be" - because I disagree. They're domesticated animals. They're quite capable and amenable to having some restriction placed on their roaming. They should be restricted - both for their own benefit (e.g. if they live near busy roads)  and for reducing the harm to other creatures (esp. during bird breeding season, for example).

Personally, I'm not keen on neighbours cats crapping in my garden, killing fledglings and small birds in my garden and so on. If someone's dog was to do that we'd be rightly angry - "you've just let your dog crap on my garden and kill birds in my garden" so why is it "meant to be" OK for fecking cats to do it?

I don't want to hurt any animals, but I have to chase cats out of my garden all the time to spare the lives of birds. Like Dave I've got a supersoaker which I keep ready in the summer. Most local cats scarper as soon as they hear my door handle click, now.

People need to treat their cats better and look after them better. 

We obviously see things different. I've been brought up with cats all my life(we had 7 at one point). We'd never even dream of keeping them locked in the house. It's natural for them to want to go out, and at an early age they know where the door is, and are crying to go out. When I lived at my grans, the house backed on to a big field, and as you can imagine, we had our fair share of dead birds. Where my wife lives, there are a lot of birds, and our youngest catches quite a few. Where I'm living at the moment at my mums, she lives on a council estate, so she rarely has the problem of her cats catching birds. What I will say is, that it depends on the cat. Some cats just don't bother with birds, and we've had a few cats like that. We've also had cats that were natural bird hunters, and would catch a lot of them. I don't like seeing cats catch birds, and I'll do my best to save a bird, or mouse, but I've always looked at it that's it's just nature. I understand the cat shit argument, and I'm with you on that. I can't imagine that's pleasant at all. 

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Isn't the  issue in NZ that they have small flightless birds like the Kiwi to protect that stay on the ground and are easy prey. Our UK moggies dragging in the odd starling or blackbird isn't really the same thing. And it's only the very bottom bit anyway where FA people live isn't it?

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I went to a zoo the other year, and they had what looked like a domesticated cat in one of the enclosures. It was just like a normal cat, but bigger. They live in parts of Scotland, and are able to live in the wild and survive. Lovely looking things, but I can imagine they can be very vicious. My mum used to have two feral cats, well part feral. They were a bit bigger than your usual cat, and obviously had a bit more about them in terms of hunting. One got mauled to death by a staffy. 

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8 minutes ago, Rugeley Villa said:
3 hours ago, blandy said:

What do you mean by "meant to be" - because I disagree. They're domesticated animals. They're quite capable and amenable to having some restriction placed on their roaming. They should be restricted - both for their own benefit (e.g. if they live near busy roads)  and for reducing the harm to other creatures (esp. during bird breeding season, for example).

Personally, I'm not keen on neighbours cats crapping in my garden, killing fledglings and small birds in my garden and so on. If someone's dog was to do that we'd be rightly angry - "you've just let your dog crap on my garden and kill birds in my garden" so why is it "meant to be" OK for fecking cats to do it?

I don't want to hurt any animals, but I have to chase cats out of my garden all the time to spare the lives of birds. Like Dave I've got a supersoaker which I keep ready in the summer. Most local cats scarper as soon as they hear my door handle click, now.

People need to treat their cats better and look after them better. 

We obviously see things different. I've been brought up with cats all my life(we had 7 at one point). We'd never even dream of keeping them locked in the house. It's natural for them to want to go out, and at an early age they know where the door is, and are crying to go out. When I lived at my grans, the house backed on to a big field, and as you can imagine, we had our fair share of dead birds. Where my wife lives, there are a lot of birds, and our youngest catches quite a few. Where I'm living at the moment at my mums, she lives on a council estate, so she rarely has the problem of her cats catching birds. What I will say is, that it depends on the cat. Some cats just don't bother with birds, and we've had a few cats like that. We've also had cats that were natural bird hunters, and would catch a lot of them. I don't like seeing cats catch birds, and I'll do my best to save a bird, or mouse, but I've always looked at it that's it's just nature. I understand the cat shit argument, and I'm with you on that. I can't imagine that's pleasant at all. 

I think both of you realise the damage that is being done so you don't see things differently in that sense.  The only difference, to put it bluntly, is that only one of you seems to care.  "It's just nature" is not true when the predator has been introduced by us into an eco-system that was not prepared for it.  That isn't 'just nature'.  That's literally an invasive species.  By your reasoning you could use that term to dismiss the wiping out of entire species just because we like having cats around the place.  I guess that part of New Zealand, by being a more fragile eco-system than most, has decided to be the first to say 'enough is enough'.

As I say, I like cats, but I can definitely see why they've gone down that route, and in a way I'm surprised more hasn't been done to date.  Perhaps this will be the precedent.

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8 minutes ago, BOF said:

I think both of you realise the damage that is being done so you don't see things differently in that sense.  The only difference, to put it bluntly, is that only one of you seems to care.  "It's just nature" is not true when the predator has been introduced by us into an eco-system that was not prepared for it.  That isn't 'just nature'.  That's literally an invasive species.  By your reasoning you could use that term to dismiss the wiping out of entire species just because we like having cats around the place.  I guess that part of New Zealand, by being a more fragile eco-system than most, has decided to be the first to say 'enough is enough'.

As I say, I like cats, but I can definitely see why they've gone down that route, and in a way I'm surprised more hasn't been done to date.  Perhaps this will be the precedent.

I do actually care BOF lad. The difference we have , I think, is that I didn't even realise it was a problem, and causing problems to the eco-system. I genuinely didn't know, so maybe pure ignorance on my part. 

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2 minutes ago, Rugeley Villa said:

I do actually care BOF lad. The difference we have , I think, is that I didn't even realise it was a problem, and causing problems to the eco-system. I genuinely didn't know, so maybe pure ignorance on my part. 

Yep fair enough in that case, and I know you wouldn't be alone in that regard.  I suppose some people genuinely don't realise their moggy is such a capable assassin or a willing one.  They can behave completely differently inside and outside the house.

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2 minutes ago, BOF said:

Yep fair enough in that case, and I know you wouldn't be alone in that regard.  I suppose some people genuinely don't realise their moggy is such a capable assassin or a willing one.  They can behave completely differently inside and outside the house.

My wife has two cats at her house. One is older, 10-11 years, and the younger one is not even 1 yet. The younger was is a right little sod, and catches a lot of birds. He dominates the older one, and basically bullies him. It's not so bad when we are about, but when we go on holiday, and come back, the older one has hair missing and battle scars on him. This younger one, is obviously attacking the older one more when we are away. His behaviour must change for the worse when we are away when he knows he can get away with more. 

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