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The First Cat War

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Re: The First Cat War

#21

Post by bombcar »

jprete wrote: post #20
EdwardDiego wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really liked a line in that Nope movie: "He got caught up trying to tame a predator. You can't do that. You got to enter an agreement with one."

Dogs are also predators. Quite a lot of large dog breeds should not be kept with cats, because they have enough prey drive that the cat will be in very grave danger. Dogs were historically bred for ratting and gophering. I'm thinking the reason dogs don't go for birds is that the birds are too small and fast; dogs are predators, but they aren't ambush predators like cats.

Dogs are also pack animals (as wolves) and so they can be trained easier by abusing the pack instincts, even unintentionally.

Cats are solitary and so even if you get them to not do something in front of you, once you're out of sight they'll quickly revert to doing whatever it is they want to do.

Re: The First Cat War

#22

Post by munificent »

jprete wrote: post #20
EdwardDiego wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really liked a line in that Nope movie: "He got caught up trying to tame a predator. You can't do that. You got to enter an agreement with one."

Dogs are also predators. Quite a lot of large dog breeds should not be kept with cats, because they have enough prey drive that the cat will be in very grave danger. Dogs were historically bred for ratting and gophering. I'm thinking the reason dogs don't go for birds is that the birds are too small and fast; dogs are predators, but they aren't ambush predators like cats.

Dogs are pack predators. They know that to succeed they must be part of a cooperating team, so they instinctively work towards group harmony.

Cats are solitary predators. Any other predator is just a competitor for the same resources.

Re: The First Cat War

#23

Post by rufus_foreman »

praptak wrote: post #19

"Most cats were considered working animals, and were expected to rid houses and barns of mice and rats" Cats don't generally hunt rats[0]. Before modern pest control the working animal to kill rats was a dog: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Terrier [0] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2018.00146...

>> An animal shelter in Chicago has released 1,000 feral cats throughout the city to combat a rat crisis.

...

>> While the deployed felines will sometimes kill rats, the mere presence of these repurposed alley cats is usually enough to scare off pests.

-- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/14/chicago-fera...

To a rat, a house with a cat that probably won't kill it is less attractive than a house with no cat.

Re: The First Cat War

#24

Post by bombcar »

Nextgrid wrote: post #18
EdwardDiego wrote: post #14

Reminder that a cat named Tibbles once rendered an entire species of New Zealand wren extinct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyall%27s_wren

The article itself seems to disprove this? It wasn't all caused by a single cat.

All Tibbles had to do was eat the last one (or the second to last).

Re: The First Cat War

#26

Post by [deleted] »

devmor wrote: post #7

If you love cats, keep your cat indoors. They are quite happy when provided for - especially if you've got two. My wife works full time at a nonprofit no-kill shelter, and the amount of sick and miserable cats that come in rescued from the outdoors is mind boggling. Strays do not live happy (or very lengthy) lives. If you have strays around, consider enrolling in your local TNR (Trap, Neuter, Release) program, to hel…

[deleted]

Re: The First Cat War

#27

Post by EdwardDiego »

Nextgrid wrote: post #18
EdwardDiego wrote: post #14

Reminder that a cat named Tibbles once rendered an entire species of New Zealand wren extinct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyall%27s_wren

The article itself seems to disprove this? It wasn't all caused by a single cat.

Tibbles was the first cat brought to the island, and she had kittens, hence the feral cats.

Tibbles didn't kill them all, but bringing Tibbles doomed the species.

Re: The First Cat War

#28

Post by permo-w »

nullstyle wrote: post #17

My understanding is that the dirty little secret of these types of articles is that many song birds actually die because of the harshness of winter (and from what I gather, growing occurence of extreme weather events.) Unfortunately, that is much harder to study that than killing and cataloging the gut contents of some stray cats and doing some statistics. --- That said, keep your cat indoors and spread cat-proof nes…

do you have any evidence for this "dirty little secret"?

Re: The First Cat War

#29

Post by dist-epoch »

kjs3 wrote: post #3
coolThingsFirst wrote: post #2

They are the funniest creatures on earth. Manipulative, hilariously small, arrogant and lazy. Yet apex predators, god must have a sense of humour. They went as far as manipulating prophet in islam so he placed them as ritually pure and a sign of faith for people who like them. Christians killed them so bubonic plague came and ravaged europe. Coincidence, I think not.

Cats (domestic ones, at least, and most that aren't 'big cats') aren't apex predators; those are predators with virtually no predators of their own. Cats are predators, but lots of things eat cats. Not that my cats don't think they're top of the food chain.

They are the apex predators of their particular size (big cats or small cats).

Re: The First Cat War

#30

Post by permo-w »

2024throwaway wrote: post #13
coolThingsFirst wrote: post #2

They are the funniest creatures on earth. Manipulative, hilariously small, arrogant and lazy. Yet apex predators, god must have a sense of humour. They went as far as manipulating prophet in islam so he placed them as ritually pure and a sign of faith for people who like them. Christians killed them so bubonic plague came and ravaged europe. Coincidence, I think not.

[flagged]

all my instincts tell me that the parasite cats can spread to humans - toxoplasma gondii - really genuinely does change some humans' brain chemistry to make them unconditionally love cats. obviously instincts mean little, but some of the conversations you can get it in with cat people really beggar belief
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