[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.]

  • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
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    2 months ago

    There are many, many, many ways to provide enrichment for a cat without letting them outside

    Sure, I could buy some live mice for her to ‘play’ with, but I don’t want that mess inside my house.

    • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.orgOP
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      2 months ago

      your cat does not need to hunt live animals to be happy and healthy. That’s what cat toys are for. You should be playing with your cat at least 20 minutes a day, if not more. I get that some cats get lazy and don’t want to play for 20 minutes, and I got no judgment for stopping early if your cat is super uninterested. But you gotta at least try every day. That’s just part of responsible cat parenting.

      To @Faydaikin@beehaw.org’s point, I think that if you can’t do that, you shouldn’t adopt a cat.

      • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
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        2 months ago

        your cat does not need to hunt live animals to be happy and healthy.

        It’s a predator, of course it needs to hunt to be happy.

        • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.orgOP
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          2 months ago

          yep. which is why you should play with your cat with toys, which won’t give them disgusting diseases like wild animals will.

          • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
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            2 months ago

            Nah. She’s this fluffy little murder machine. She needs to sow death and destruction on the local mouse population.

                  • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
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                    2 months ago

                    You don’t even know where I live. What endangered songbirds? Also: very few cats are actually capable of catching birds. We mostly have jackdaws around here, and they are way too smart to get caught. They like to taunt the cats.