Wild cats are absolutely native to Europe, though, and domestic cats have been around for literally thousands of years. The issue is that there’s a ton more of them now than say, two thousand years ago, overwhelmingly pets and feral cats instead of “working” animals.
Here in Hungary, but I think in most places in Europe as well, keeping cats inside is generally considered unnatural and cruel to the cat… which is partly a tradition thing (“animals don’t belong in the house!” say all my elderly relatives living in the countryside) and partly, ironically, a domestic animal welfare thing (“it’s better for animals to live their natural lives instead of being holed up inside” etc.). Also, traditionally neither group cares a whole lot about wildlife, I’ve lived around outside cats all my life, and them bringing home prey was always considered just the way things are and should be.
Myself, I never gave a thought about cats destroying wildlife until I came across an article about people hunting cats in Australia for destroying local animals. Reading up on that made me think about all the half-dead birds, snakes, mice, etc. that my old cat used to bring home… and realize that it was a lot. (He was very prolific.) Fortunately at the time he was already an indoors cat (us having moved) but yeah, since then I’m definitely a supporter of pet cats living indoors.
Agreed 100%, but it hasn’t been that long since most people in the US thought that about dogs too - that they should be outdoors and free to roam the neighborhood, or that it was OK to tether them outside for long periods. I’ll never understand it, or the people who think spaying and neutering are cruel, but a lot of people in the US still think that way. There’s a reason a lot of shelters in the South try to get dogs adopted up North, because they know the culture of how we treat them is much better on average.
FWIW the shelter where my wife adopted our cat, who we believe was born feral, does not allow adoptions to anyone who plans to let them outside. We do take her out on leash sometimes, and in her carrier backpack.
I realize you are just relaying this argument and not making it yourself, so apologies for shooting the messenger a little bit.
But that’s horseshit. “Natural” doesn’t mean anything for a domestic animal raised for thousands of years to be exactly what we want them to be. Furthermore, being in constant fear of everything around them and feeling threatened by other cats etc, along with the anxiety of having to constantly mark and defend a large territory is not a better life. Wild animals have short brutal lives, and so do outdoor cats.
Indoor cats are safer, happier, and healthier. There’s volumes of science on this.
It’s also not like outdoor cats are romping happily in the woods until they die five years sooner. They die five years sooner because they spent their life with a belly full of parasites, parvovirus, fleas, mange, and feline leukaemia. Wild animals and outdoor cats live short lives because they are unhealthy. That’s not quality over quantity, that’s simply less of both.
