The Evil of the Outdoor Cat

[laundry_queen]

25. I've never heard that about dialysis!

That's really curious to me because my xFIL was on home dialysis (first peritoneal then hemodialysis) and they had a cat. And my xMIL isn't one to go crazy about the cat hair floating around. I don't ever remember her mentioning it was an issue. xFIL goes to the hospital now as the home stuff wasn't working well for him.

BTW, I agree with cats chasing away the wildlife. The town I live in has a cat bylaw. I'm in a newer area, so not much for trees and birds here, but my parents live in an established neighborhood. Growing up, there were a lot of cats and no birds at all. Then the cat bylaw came into effect and they were very strict with enforcement for quite a few years. It didn't take long for all kinds of birds to show up. Squirrels too. And more bunnies than ever before despite a ton of foxes (lol, shit is that the plural of fox? or is it just fox? brain fart). I really enjoyed my parents' backyard and deck with the trees and the birds. Then they stopped enforcing the cat bylaw and within a couple of years, 4 neighbors had their cats running around. My parents have a dog that does his business in a little raised wooden box filled with sand in the backyard. They had to start covering it because the cats would come and dig in it every night. I lived there for a few months with my kids and we couldn't keep our sandbox uncovered for more than a few hours. All the birds were gone by then. The squirrels haven't been around much though i do see one every now and again. Bunnies still come around but most of them here are bigger than the cats. But still, I miss the birds. My dad's bird feeder sits full for weeks on end now. Very sad. I'm very against cats being allowed to run around the neighborhood and destroy other people's yards. We had a cat for a few years (my ex's) and it was always indoors only. Never had a problem with him wanting to go out, even though he would watch the dog go out.

ETA because I read downthread about the whole mice thing - during the years we didn't have a cat bylaw, we had the most insane mouse infestation I've ever heard of...we lived next to a field and the farmer had left the rows of straw in the field and you could kick over some straw and there would be 2-3 nests of baby mice every square foot. It was unreal. I was a kid then and we had mice everywhere...in our yard, in the park, on the roads. Our dog killed a few but the cats running around didn't even make a dent. We had quite a few mice before than and after. The mice population dropped off right around the time of the cat bylaw. Weird.