Comment on How do I get the damn cat to understand I can feed myself?

• Brummbaer@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  The European wild cat exists. Domestic cats may have come from Africa, but cats have been native in Europe for a long time.

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  • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I think the problem with domestic cats is not the color of their passport, but the fact they are not subject to pressures limiting predators in the wild.

    They have:

    a) have permanent shelter b) have constant access to food

    So while others animals are starving and being eaten, the cat just goes out there every day and kills everything it can find, and if it can’t find anything, it goes back and has a full meal, and it does this every day for most of its very long life no matter how much food is available or how cold it gets.

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    • Brummbaer@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      That’s the reason wildcats are not a problem, they have small stable populations and barely interact with humans and domestic cats.

      “Modern” Wildcats have been in all of Europe for at least 300k years, so they were just another predator species among many others.

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      • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        What specific wild cat are you talking about in Europe? Do you mean feral domesticated cats (which are essentially this one small African cat)? Or larger critters like bobcats?

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  • Nefara@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    This is like saying because there are toads native to Australia, that Cane toads are fine. An invasive species is an invasive species, and is characterized by its spread, reproduction, and harm to the local ecosystem.

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• Nighed@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  There is a species of wild cat native to the UK: www.wildlifetrusts.org/…/wildcat

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  • Nefara@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Yes but that’s not the cat people are usually referring to when they say "I have a cat I let outside "

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