How Far Do Your Cats Roam?
news.nationalgeographic.com
How Far Do Your Cats Roam?
1–10 of 19 posts
Re: How Far Do Your Cats Roam?
#2If you have a cats that roams outside, beware of bunchers. Bunchers are thieves that trap and steal domesticated pets and sell them to laboratories to be experimented on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncher
An RFID microchip combined with a GPS collar (Pawtrack.com has a good one) may help prevent such a terrible outcome, but there are no guarantees.
Re: How Far Do Your Cats Roam?
#3The BBC has an article about tracking cats (from 2013), although the animation could have been better.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22567526 (animation)
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22821639 (actual article)
The accompanying documentation can be found on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPthfv1XL_w
Re: How Far Do Your Cats Roam?
#4If you have a cats that roams outside, beware of bunchers. Bunchers are thieves that trap and steal domesticated pets and sell them to laboratories to be experimented on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncher An RFID microchip combined with a GPS collar (Pawtrack.com has a good one) may help prevent such a terrible outcome, but there are no guarantees.
[deleted]
Re: How Far Do Your Cats Roam?
#5If you have a cats that roams outside, beware of bunchers. Bunchers are thieves that trap and steal domesticated pets and sell them to laboratories to be experimented on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncher An RFID microchip combined with a GPS collar (Pawtrack.com has a good one) may help prevent such a terrible outcome, but there are no guarantees.
Interesting consideration, but is it a legitimate concern? For the actual "Bunchers", it seems like there are much easier ways of acquiring cats than trying to steal domestic cats. And for cat owners, free roam cats face an endless array of very serious perils, including disease, cars, malicious neighobors/teens, dogs, coyotes, etc. I can't imagine that people stealing cats for research account for much more than a blip compared to the completely banal sources of imminent mortality when a cat runs free.
Re: How Far Do Your Cats Roam?
#6I don't understand why people are allowed to let their pets roam free. I grew up fishing feral cats out of places they weren't supposed to be, and it drove me crazy that people would just let their un-spayed, un-neutered cats wander around to become their neighbors' vicious little problems.
Even if your kitty is fixed, she's plenty destructive to the local wildlife, not to mention a disease risk when she gets in fights with raccoons and other animals that carry rabies. Dogs aren't allowed to run free, and cats shouldn't be, either.
Re: How Far Do Your Cats Roam?
#7I don't understand why people are allowed to let their pets roam free. I grew up fishing feral cats out of places they weren't supposed to be, and it drove me crazy that people would just let their un-spayed, un-neutered cats wander around to become their neighbors' vicious little problems. Even if your kitty is fixed, she's plenty destructive to the local wildlife, not to mention a disease risk when she gets in figh…
Because most of the time they hang around the house. If you read the article and watch the video they say that a small minority go exploring. Most people also keep them inside at night. Furthermore since they are generally fed well by owners they have diminished interest in hunting. Keep in mind that dogs are locked up because they are usually a lot larger than cats and can attack people. It also helps that they aren't as good at jumping and climbing as cats. If dogs could jump and climb like cats then people wouldn't own them as pets.
Re: How Far Do Your Cats Roam?
#8I don't understand why people are allowed to let their pets roam free. I grew up fishing feral cats out of places they weren't supposed to be, and it drove me crazy that people would just let their un-spayed, un-neutered cats wander around to become their neighbors' vicious little problems. Even if your kitty is fixed, she's plenty destructive to the local wildlife, not to mention a disease risk when she gets in figh…
Because most of the time they hang around the house. If you read the article and watch the video they say that a small minority go exploring. Most people also keep them inside at night. Furthermore since they are generally fed well by owners they have diminished interest in hunting. Keep in mind that dogs are locked up because they are usually a lot larger than cats and can attack people. It also helps that they aren…
...and yet, clearly, enough roam that it becomes a problem. I have the scars to prove it.
In any case, all of those things apply to dogs, as well, but we're not allowed to let our pet dogs roam.
Re: How Far Do Your Cats Roam?
#9I don't understand why people are allowed to let their pets roam free. I grew up fishing feral cats out of places they weren't supposed to be, and it drove me crazy that people would just let their un-spayed, un-neutered cats wander around to become their neighbors' vicious little problems. Even if your kitty is fixed, she's plenty destructive to the local wildlife, not to mention a disease risk when she gets in figh…
> it drove me crazy that people would just let their un-spayed, un-neutered cats wander around to become their neighbors' vicious little problems.
This drives me insane, too. We've got some neighbors who apparently refuse to neuter their cats, and therefore they tend to wander and are highly aggressive. I suspect they're also not inoculated, and more curiously in my state (of the US), all domestic animals must at least be inoculated against rabies--so if their cats were to bite someone, they could face substantial fines. I'd imagine they aren't aware of this. (They've also had a number of dogs that have turned aggressive, gotten hit by cars, and have presented themselves as a neighborhood nuisance, so it's not the animals fault... some people just shouldn't have pets).
The other problem is that I suspect they got the cats to keep local rodent populations down, but then they reason that the rodents should augment much of the cats' diets, so they feed them very infrequently (and thus, they tend to roam looking for food). According to local lore, resident snowbirds who move around for 3-6 months out of the year tend to get cats for this reason, then leave them behind when they depart for seasonal reasons under the assumption the cats will be there when they return. Often, they're not.
Sigh.
Re: How Far Do Your Cats Roam?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because most of the time they hang around the house. If you read the article and watch the video they say that a small minority go exploring. Most people also keep them inside at night. Furthermore since they are generally fed well by owners they have diminished interest in hunting. Keep in mind that dogs are locked up because they are usually a lot larger than cats and can attack people. It also helps that they aren…
...and yet, clearly, enough roam that it becomes a problem. I have the scars to prove it. In any case, all of those things apply to dogs, as well, but we're not allowed to let our pet dogs roam.
Yes but dogs can attack strangers that encroach on their territory. That's why they need to be fenced. Cats can't really do the same to a human.