Originally published at: Cats put on lockdown in Germany | Boing Boing
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Sadly, this will probably turn out to be as successful as COVID lockdowns for humans.
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Cats will live, on average, 2-5 times longer indoors than outdoors. And outdoor cats are excellent, efficient killers of birds. As someone who once lived in a home with five indoor furrballs, please, consider keeping them in!
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This is why I don’t understand why the animal protection organizations are objecting. If I was donating to any that did, that would be the end of my donations to them.
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That’s a bit of a cultural difference between Germany and the US. Indoor cats are somewhat controversial. Many consider it animal cruelty.
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Additionally, my indoor cats have never sprayed my neighbor’s welcome mats, used their flower beds as a litter box, or gotten their pets so worked up by invading their yard that they injured themselves.
Please folks, don’t make your pets everyone else’s problem.
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Too true. Still, indoor cat owners should remain on guard against diseases. Once during a vet visit, I was shocked by the list of parasites a cat can pick up through the screen on a window or door!
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all domesticated cats should be indoor cats… imho
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A while ago I took a course to become a master naturalist (much in the vein of a master gardener), learning plant id, birding, etc. There was a really nice guy in the class who would get really riled up about people putting up bird feeders. He thought feeding wild animals was BAD, period.
Then it came out that he had two cats, and let them wander outside on his rural property. Just WTAF? Offering a little supplemental food to the native birds was off limits, but bringing in non-native predators and giving them the competitive advantage of warm, safe shelter and adequate food didn’t strike him as a bad idea? I was so confused.
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For those with good enough German or enough patience with the online translation, here is more detail:
The city authorities themselves are not thrilled.
Here is a story with a bit of detail on the grounds for opposition.
On a brief read-through, they seem to boil down to:
- My cats don’t go there
- my cats don’t kill that many animals
- It’s cruel to keep cats indoors all the time.
all combining to “it’s disproportionate”.
As for point 1, the regulation does say that cat owners who can demonstrate with GPS tracking that their cats haven’t been in the protected area in a previous period can be exempted.
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Oh, man! I gotta start doing more Duolingo!
Brushing up on German (I took 5 semesters undergrad and have forgotten a lot!) is my pandemic pastime. I thought I was doing OK! 
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all cats who live in the southern area of town
Cats from the north side looking south
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Cats have been living outdoors for centuries and we’ve never had a problem with them killing rare birds until now. It’s just another way to control us and I’m going to get 14 cats and let them outside because socialism is bad. Let’s go Brandon, Trump 2024.
Said my local Facebook group.
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This sounds like a good discussion for Nextdoor. /s
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Well, it’s time for the culture to catch up with the science, clearly. Thankfully, the German people have shown themselves to be much more amenable to things changing than, say, Americans and masks. Hopefully they can change for the good of the fluffy folk (and the feathered folk in danger as well!)
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Oh, everybody knows that cats live longer and safer indoors. There are just many who do not think it is worth it. They consider a more “natural” life preferrable, even if shorter. They view it as quality of life over quantity.
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