Is it time to ban outdoor pet cats?

By W. Thomas Leroux

Cats are a source of great amusement to me – the internet is absolutely overflowing with terabytes of cute cat videos. Did you see the one where the kitten and the dolphin… actually, that’s outside of the scope of this piece.  

I admit, I never really thought about the effect cats had on the local environment until one day I saw a neighbourhood cat disassembling a cardinal it had caught. Curiosity set in, and after a bit of reading, I understood how profoundly serious this problem has become. 

An article in the January 2023 issue of Nature said it best, 

“We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals.” 

Sources for Canadian data, are thinner on the topic. 

In addition, pet cats that are let out, use our lawns and gardens as latrines. If a dog owner didn’t pick up after their dog, many people would call the city. Why does it seem like no one does this for cats? If an off-leash dog kills another animal, things get serious quickly. So why are pet cats allowed outside unsupervised to hunt animals? I’ve heard “cats need to go outside to be cats,” but when I ask for evidence, it usually results in the subject being changed how I clearly dislike cats. I do like cats. They’re adorable. I just don’t want to live with one. 

There are some wonderful cat owners who have trained their cat to walk on a harness and it’s absolutely adorable, with the added bonus that it gets the cat outside with the owner in control of it. The reality of the situation is that pet cats are an invasive species, causing havoc in the local environments where they are. They’ve wiped out entire species of animals in a few places.

So, what do we do about it? I think the solution is two-fold:

1. Expand existing trap-neuter-return programs with unowned cats, which is a system where feral/unowned cats are trapped, neutered, and then turned to the area they were found. This doesn’t help immediately but is a long-term way of reducing the feral cat population. 
2. Ban all household cats from being outdoors unsupervised (apply same rules as dogs), possibly starting with new registrations, allowing current household cats to age out. 

I’m admittedly not an expert this topic, but based on what I’ve read so far, I think it’s time we do something about it, and at least, I want to get others thinking about it as well.