[alt text: an illustration of a person with a head-empty expression on their face, who is saying, "Not letting your cat outside is CRUEL!" Around the person are various gruesome scenes of different cats in distress. From the top and going clockwise, the scenes include: a cat being carried away by a hawk; a cat that is on fire; a dead cat in the road that has been run over by a car; several dead kittens; a cat that is missing an eye and various patches of fur; a cat that is feasting on a songbird; and a cat that is being carried away by a coyote. The person appears to be completely oblivious to these scenes of distress.]
In their native habitat, not in North America. Probably, at least. Who knows, there wouldn't be anyone around to know
So you think that mountain lions, cougars, pumas, etc... never existed in the Americas? You think that there are NO native cat populations here at all? Shit man... The bob cat I found under my trailer in my back yard must have been a figment of my imagination.
While "domestic" cats are invasive... Cats exist literally in EVERY STATE I'VE EVER LIVED IN. (New York, AZ, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia.) And I've SEEN native cats in literally EVERY one of those states.
The actual problem here isn't the "native-ness" of "domestic" cats... but that their population is inflated because we cater to them and create what amount to an unlimited food supply for them. "domestic" cats are barely domesticated.
Edit: And because I know it's going to happen. No... I don't have "indoor" cats. I do feed the "shed cats" (feral-ish). Which should actually stop them from eating wildlife... or at least stop it significantly. They are friendly with us... Not with much of anyone else. I actually don't really agree with having animals in the house at all... I just find the premise that cats wouldn't exist here as quite a silly concept.
Edit2: and the ones we take "care" of are fixed.
Where did I say that? Felis catus aka the domestic cat would not be in North America. In fact, as I learned when doing research into their native habitat, domestic cats only exist because of artificial selection, so would not be anywhere. In regards to native species in North America, domestic cats hunt different species of animals compared to the native counterparts. They also tend to do so in smaller ranges, with higher numbers in smaller areas. For instance, bobcats tend to have ranges from about 3-8 square miles, with variations based on age, sex, and season. They hunt rabbits (and other rodents) and medium to large birds. Domestic cats hunt small rodents and birds, but live in much smaller areas with much higher numbers packed into that small area.
I do agree that humans are the problem. Letting cats outside, not getting them fixed, essentially creating feral cat colonies is the problem. I don't think anyone saying you should not let your cats outside is saying anything besides that.
Domestic cats are BARELY different from Bobcats... which are indeed native. Correct without humans cats as we specifically know them wouldn't exist. But other cats do exist. They are native.
Same can be said for mice though.... mice as they exist in large cities wouldn't exist as they are now without human interaction. Are they now invasive and non-native? We don't tend to think of it that way. But it's just as accurate as cats are here...
This is simply a size thing... Juvenile Bobcats act more or less exactly like domestic cats in this respect.
And yet... OP is in the thread judging everyone for ANY cat being outside Not talking about "feral" at all and specifically goes out of their way to include ALL domestic cats period. So yes... there are people out there claiming much more than that.
Edit: Keep in mind the thread's title is "Indoor/Outdoor Cats"... So definitionally NOT the feral cats you're talking about.
Again, I never said other cats would not exist. The comic is about domestic cats, not native cats.
Bobcats are wildly different from domestic cats. For instance, they don't decimate local bird populations and they are generally solitary creatures. Domestic cats tend to live in colonies and do in fact decimate bird populations. In regards to juvenile bobcats, their range increases and they move to their own, mostly solitary, range as they get older. Domestic cats don't grow out of living in a feral colony. Bobcats breed less frequently (usually once, but sometimes twice a year) whereas domestic cats tend to have more than one litter a year (1.4 on average), so their numbers go up a lot faster. Adult bobcats are also 2-3 times as big as adult domestic cats.
The comic itself is about pets, not feral cats, so it makes sense that OP would be focusing on that. Feral cats are the biggest problem in the discussion about killing native wildlife (birds in particular). The thing is, you don't get feral cats without people letting their unfixed house cats roam free. This is also leaving out the fact the that letting a house cat roam free is bad for the cat itself (shorter lifespans and more diseases/parasites), which is, at least as I have been reading it, is where OP is coming from.
So depending on the cat breed... virtually no difference at all. The larger of the 2 cats that we feed (shed cat, remember "feral")... is 20-22 pounds (the smaller brother is 16-17 lbs). He is just as heavy as an average bobcat. Though admittedly less "stocky". But my point is that they're similar, "virtually the same" or "barely different". I never claimed 1:1. But if they're 99% the same... then it's the same. Marginally larger is not sufficient argument that they're different. Bob cats are not like mountain lions. They're not "huge".
Check the graph of your own source...https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380/figures/2 It shows that normal owned domestic cats are not the issue, which is exactly what the comic is pointing "fun" at. The "owner" that feeds the cat and lets them outside from time to time are nowhere near the problem. You're context switching between "Feral" and owned and claiming that everything is bad when it's only one category or the other. This is literal bad faith argument.
Further... No, domestic cats don't "tend" to live in colonies. They only do so only due to food issues and will arguably NEVER create social group unless it's required.
Cats are wildly solitary... even domestic ones (even the ones that form prides!). There's a reason why it's a pain in the ass to get them to get along when you get a new kitten in the house. And even then they never really get along... More accurately just tolerating each other. The only cats I've ever seen truly "get along" are siblings from the same litter... And even then it looks more like a "we tolerate each other a lot" more than proactively working together as a pack/colony.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news... But 1.4 is between 1 and sometimes 2 a year. No idea where you're getting this stat from, but the way you present it... you've basically presented the same exact number twice, in two different ways and claimed that it's different. If "1 to sometimes 2 times" actually means 1.2 as an average... 1.2 and 1.4 isn't that far apart.
Cool. Then this comic doesn't apply to a very large subset of owners who do the right thing and virtually all cats that make it to any human system at all. Now you can fuck off with pushing it onto everyone which is what OP is doing in half of their posts in this thread. Especially since non-altered cats tend to do shit like spray. If that cat is EVER indoors, they're probably fixed. That makes the comic fucking stupid. It makes the OP a jackass for targeting a group of people who aren't the problem. And makes you an accomplice for shilling it as well by conflating the two groups of problem as if they're the same. Domestic cats that are indoor pets are not the problem... even when they go outside. It's the feral cats... which has nothing to do with the guy portrayed in the comic.
Just because some domestic cats can get as big as some bobcats does not make that the norm. Also, size is not the only differentiator, which is why I brought up breeding, food source, and habitat.
Domestic cats and feral cats are the same species, so I apologize for not making that distinction in the one sentence. It is an easy mistake to make, and you did the same thing in your next paragraph:
And went on to describe feral cats. That being said, I literally said feral cats were the problem. From my previous comment:
Talking about bad faith, the part you left out in the description of feral cats is:
That [...] did a lot of heavy lifting in your version...
That is a 15% difference, which in breeding numbers is huge. And this is talking about number of litters, so doesn't even get down to total number of kittens born (although litter size is pretty similar). Also of note, bobcats don't generally start breeding until their second year. Domestic cats start at 6 months of age, which is why we fix cats as soon as possible.
Who said it was about responsible cat owners? Show me where I said all cat owners do this? Or OP for that matter? He has been responding to folks that literally say they let their pet cats outside.
The comic is about the health of the cats. Feral cats came up as a natural progression of that discussion. I don't actually like the comic, but it isn't about the health of wildlife in any way that I can see, but about the health of house cats. It is pretty well documented that outdoor cats do not live as long as indoor only cats.
Again, when did I say they are the same group? This particular thread was because someone unrelated said domestic cats would be outside if humans weren't involved.