Friend of mine lives in a country area and (unwisely I think) lets his cats out of the house. They tend to pick fights with small snakes then bring them into the house as trophies through the cat door.
Because your cat, left to its own devices, is still a murder machine.
Dogs too.
Yep, completely agree.
To be “fair” one could say this about humans, too. In fact we put all the other murder-machines to shame. Assigning the job to others doesn’t erase the guilt.
Yeah but Humans have rules to follow. Domestic animals are a deniable way to get around those rules, like having guard dog for example.
Our present dog, a probably German Shep/Lab mix ( an ex Res dog ) presented us with a dead squirrel, we said “no thanks, don’t kill squirrels”, and then a Magpie, “No thanks, don’t kill birds” and that was the end of that. She still kills mice, though, but that’s personal. The type of dogs I had most of my life, hound dogs, tend to take the view that their job is to find animals, mine is to kill them. I don’t hunt or hike with a gun, so that can be a problem. One dog I had took me right into a wild boar den (one exit 
) and another time took me closer to a Moose than I wanted to be (by the time I could smell it which was too late ) Every dog I ever had or known knows what a gun is, too, even when they’re pups and it’s the first time they’ve seen one. ( by “knows” I mean they get excited, and if someone shoulders a gun in the house most dogs I’ve known will freak out. I think they all knew guns were for killing )
Yeah, but most of our murder is not domesticated.
Well not sure how you convinced him squirrl hunting was a bad thing.
One here this idiot rabbit made a nest in my yard. If she picked one yard over or caddy corner she would have been in a spot with no dogs.
I tried to protect them, but my dog ended up getting a couple of them. I fenced it off and though I had made it clear that area was mine and to stay out. But our 30lb mutt who normally wouldn’t harm a fly and super docile, raggled a couple little ones to death. Doh.
I haven’t had the same experience with dogs knowing what guns are. At least not unless they have been trained. I grew up with bird dogs. A brittney and then Vislas. Very pretty dogs!
When you call cats and dogs murder-machines you are not talking about them killing cats and dogs. We do a lot of cross-species murder if we are going to call it that. A lot. We have a blind spot about it maybe when condemning our companion animals for their instinctive behavior. Anyway I do eat meat so it is kind of an academic argument. On the other hand I keep my cats indoors.
Oh, a pedantic objection, I see.
Ok - cats and dogs are killing machines.
To be clear, I am just stating a fact, not condemning them for it.
I could have called your response pedantic, but just answered your objection instead.
Yeah me too. There is that little thing, though, that many people call for the slaughter of feral cats because they damage the environment. I always want to ask if the individual has looked in the mirror lately.
That surprises me…as long as I can recall I have tested this response when I could; never encountered a dog that didn’t respond to guns. I grew up in the mountains of B.C., so maybe it is a regional thing, but it seems to be part of the inherent knowledge they have. Ya, rabbits sometimes seem like they’re on a mission to feed all the carnivores. One time one of my dogs encountered a pair of rabbits in our river valley trail system…not really a park but not really wild. People often release pet rabbits around this area; if you see a rabbit and not a hare that’s usually how they got there because only hares are indigenous here. Anyway, this was summer, and in the long grass the dog found two dead rabbits, curled up together. Starved, I assume, while surrounded by something they could eat.
Some feral cats are good for keeping down the rodent population, especially in cities. Too many and they become a problem in other ways. Like a lof things, there is no “good or bad”, but a balance that needs maintained.
Hmm my dogs saw them as a queue they get to go run around in a field soon (sometimes). But I have puppy sat and never encountering one before, they took the same interest as one would a shovel or a broom.
Huh - what an odd story. But yes, don’t dump domesticated animals. It leads to all sorts of problems.
Indeed. That’s how we got wild boar here…someone got the idea to raise them as domesticated “game” and a few ranchers raised them. Turned out to be no market, they were either released or escaped . I’ve also found hedgehogs in the wild here. I was surprised to see on a game cam in my hometown (Nelson, B.C.) there are now wild turkey there. The cougars and wolves probably like that, easy prey!
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