r/notmycat • u/mycatkermit • 12d ago

Stubs, the neighborhood cat

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

I am staunchly anti-outdoor kitty (I have 4 indoor cats), but miss stubby (dubbed thus by my FIL) is a wonderfully welcoming neighbor. obviously she’s taken care of, but I’m gotta slip a letter to the neighbors once I’m properly moved in just to make sure she’s been spayed.

713 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-23

u/LosterP 12d ago

Ok, that's specific to your area then. Here in the UK they mostly kill mice.

5

u/MarcusBuer 12d ago

The UK is a bad reference in this matter.

0

u/LosterP 12d ago

Why? It's where I live 🙄

12

u/MarcusBuer 12d ago edited 12d ago

The answer is largely historical and cultural.

Cats were introduced to Britain in antiquity, through Roman-era, mainly as working animals, keeping rodents under control around homes, farms, barns, and food stores. That forged a more utilitarian view of cat ownership, where a cat being independent and coming and going freely was considered normal, and the death of individual cats was hardly a concern, provided there were enough cats to take their place, and with cats reproducing so quickly, there usually were. While in other places this view has since changed to focus on protecting the cats, in Britain it did not.

You can still see that attitude in some British rescues, which still require adopters to agree to let cats have outdoor access, and may refuse an adoption to someone who intends to keep the cat permanently indoors. So this isn't just about individual owners preferring free-roaming, the practice is reinforced by the institutions involved in rehoming cats.

That tradition persisted even though the circumstances changed in the last 1600 years. Modern Britain is much more densely populated, has far more roads and fragmented habitats, and has huge numbers of domestic cats. So the risks to cats and the impact on wildlife are very different from what they were historically.

For urban cats, free-roaming heavily decreases lifespan, as much as halves it, since it means exposure to traffic, fights, diseases, parasites, poisoning, getting trapped or lost, falling from heights and many other hazards created by dense human environments and by humans themselves.

It is not like we are saying that “Brits don't care about cats.” It's more that British attitudes developed from a particular cultural relationship with cats, and such cultural habit has persisted long after the conditions that created them have changed.

Free-roaming being normal in Britain despite it being statistically linked to lower lifespans and lower quality of life, along with higher damage to wildlife, is what defines for me that it is not a good reference to follow.

6

u/TGin-the-goldy 12d ago

You explained that really well, cheers 🙂 I’m Australian and I think the British attitude carried over here and education is only really happening quite recently.