Too young to catch mice?

On Nov 21, 10:11*pm, "cybercat" wrote:

Jesus. Are you serious?? Rudyard Kipling? He wrote fanciful fiction, moron. And he lived 150 years ago, before cars, before the widespread urbanization of so many countries.

Please go away. And take the other aggressively stupid people with you.

You don't read for content, much do you? Pretty much have your mind
made up and iron-bound by your received wisdom?

Kipling was emphatically NOT dictating how cats should be kept and
managed - what he did do was clearly recognize their nature. And,
sadly, how much of the world perceives them - then and now - often
with fear, aggression and a lack of understanding. You display that
lack - although you do seem to be enamored of cats - what little you
actually *know* about them. Try broadening your perceptions - betcha
both you and your cats will be happier for it. Try getting out to the
country at some point and watch barn cats engage in cooperative
hunting behavior - that would be a revealing start. By the way,
although cats are opportunistic hunters, their preference is dawn and
dusk, when their vision relative to their typical prey is at its best.
The term is 'crepuscular'. So try to get out then. And, their prey
under unrestricted conditions (and assuming that they are well fed -
hungry cats will pretty much attack anything they can kill) is ~95%
ground mammal, and 5% all-the-rest (including birds)). Of those
mammals they are almost always vermin. Not cute, cuddly bunnies or
nice cute clever little chipmunks.... although what a family of
chimpunks can do with house wiring in a few days might cause a change
in perception.

Cats may be soft, cute, cuddly, friendly housepets as we would like
them to be 'ever and always'. But that is only a tiny part of what
they are. To deny the rest of it because that is the way you would
like it to be is narcissitic at least. And very likely cruel. Humans
breed cats into retarded show-pieces and think it is "good'. Ah, well
- in the panorama of human stupidity and cruelty, that is a relatively
small thing.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

wrote in message
...
On Nov 21, 10:11 pm, "cybercat" wrote:

Jesus. Are you serious?? Rudyard Kipling? He wrote fanciful fiction,
moron. And he lived 150 years ago, before cars, before the widespread
urbanization of so many countries.

Please go away. And take the other aggressively stupid people with you.

You don't read for content, much do you?

I do, just not your content. You're arguing that domestic house cats "need
to hunt." That's horse ****. The rest is you being long-winded and trying at
some kind of intellectualism that you're not up to.

I suggest you try alt.literary.aspirations.

On Nov 22, 12:14*pm, "cybercat" wrote:
wrote in message

...
On Nov 21, 10:11 pm, "cybercat" wrote:

Jesus. Are you serious?? Rudyard Kipling? He wrote fanciful fiction,
moron. And he lived 150 years ago, before cars, before the widespread
urbanization of so many countries.

Please go away. And take the other aggressively stupid people with you.
You don't read for content, much do you?

I do, just not your content. You're arguing that domestic house cats "need
to hunt." That's horse ****. The rest is you being long-winded and trying at
some kind of intellectualism that you're not up to.

Aha! So, you have wisdom from some source that flies in the face of
perhaps half-a-million years of successful adaptation (evolution, if
you permit that concept)? Please point to that source. Unless you are
able to do so, and unless that source has some basis for its
assertions, all you have is happy-feelgood-crap based on wishful
thinking.

Once again, cats are natural predators with highly developed
instinctive hunting skills for which their bodies are ideally suited.
What gives us the gall, much less the authority to deny that part of
their natures - supress it or worse? Once again, we get all sorts of
displacement behavior with bored cats and have the almighty chutzpah
to think it is their problem. Just a scintilla of basic understanding
of their natures would make them infinitely happier - but for you,
that appears to be quite threatening, also very likely more care than
you wish to take.

Try this observance, if you have a mind for it (or a mind at all, for
that matter). Watch a mature cat near a person - then with another cat
or other animal. Observe carefully. With a person, that cat acts
kittenish - behavior it has found that gets it food, affection and
attention. With another animal or left alone, it acts as part of its
environment - if interesting enough to it - and not kittenish at all.
They are NOT toys, not appendages, not put on this earth for our
entertainement. Painful as that may be to comprehend.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

wrote in message
...

Once again, cats are natural predators with highly developed
instinctive hunting skills for which their bodies are ideally suited.
What gives us the gall, much less the authority to deny that part of
their natures - supress it or worse?

===================================

I would love if my cats could go outside, if it was safe for them. I live on
a busy road and they'd be roadkill. To suggest that only people who can
allow cats to roam outdoors should have them is to condemn a lot more cats
to death for lack of homes. We (humans) caused the overpopulation problem,
we have to be responsible for it. If that means "inadequate" homes for them
because they can't go out, well, we're taking care of the problem. If cats
weren't pets and free to give birth normally, nature would weed out the
weak, or there'd be even more of a population problem, like we have with
deer. Actually I think that if domestic cats became wild again evolution
would change them to survive. Like give the females more nipples so they can
have larger litters.

Cats are pets. Get over yourself.

"Cheryl" wrote

Cats are pets. Get over yourself.

Nicely put.

On Nov 22, 3:33*pm, "Cheryl" wrote:

Cats are pets. *Get over yourself.

Never wrote that they *must* go outside. What I wrote is that they
*must* have a stimulating outlet for their natural predatory (feral)
instincts that is sufficiently and continuously unusual that they are
are sufficiently stimulated as to be *real* cats.

Cats are pets. But cats are NOT ONLY pets. And it is the "ONLY" pets
crowd that is the most damaging to cats. Imagine being in prison.
Safe, well fed, no threats. Boring. Worse than boring, an entirely
unnatural environment. Unhappy things take place in prisons -
unnatural things take place in prisons. That would be your cat unless
you take extraordinary efforts to make your environment real to it.
Rubber snakes don't quite cut it, with all due respect.

500,000 years of adaptation does not get easily or meekly put aside.
Get over that!

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

Take up religion you are in a losing battle with people who really know
cats

wrote in message
...
On Nov 22, 3:33 pm, "Cheryl" wrote:

Cats are pets. Get over yourself.

Never wrote that they *must* go outside. What I wrote is that they
*must* have a stimulating outlet for their natural predatory (feral)
instincts that is sufficiently and continuously unusual that they are
are sufficiently stimulated as to be *real* cats.

Cats are pets. But cats are NOT ONLY pets. And it is the "ONLY" pets
crowd that is the most damaging to cats. Imagine being in prison.
Safe, well fed, no threats. Boring. Worse than boring, an entirely
unnatural environment. Unhappy things take place in prisons -
unnatural things take place in prisons. That would be your cat unless
you take extraordinary efforts to make your environment real to it.
Rubber snakes don't quite cut it, with all due respect.

500,000 years of adaptation does not get easily or meekly put aside.
Get over that!

================================

I apologize. I took this paragraph out of context:

"If your dog (large or small) cannot get off its leash and run every
day until it is tired - don't get a dog. If your cat cannot hunt
natural prey and you are not prepared to spend the time and effort to
provide genuine substitutions equally as stimulating - don't get a
cat. Keep in mind that unlike a dog, a healthy cat will sleep up to 22
hours a day at the extreme, more like 16 hours on average - so they
are somewhat easier to entertain than a dog."

You did write "substitutions equally as stimulating" so I take back what I
wrote about "must go outside". It's just that there are so many *indoor vs.
outdoor* debates in these groups and I thought you were promoting outdoors
as "required".

Cheryl

On Nov 22, 7:49*pm, "Cheryl" wrote:

You did write "substitutions equally as stimulating" so I take back what I
wrote about "must go outside". *It's just that there are so many *indoor vs.
outdoor* debates in these groups and I thought you were promoting outdoors
as "required".

Thank you. Having cats choose to live with you is not an easy road to
take. But the efforts, when taken, are more than worth it. Those
efforts not taken are nothing less than cruel.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

wrote in message
...
On Nov 22, 7:49 pm, "Cheryl" wrote:

You did write "substitutions equally as stimulating" so I take back what I
wrote about "must go outside". It's just that there are so many *indoor
vs.
outdoor* debates in these groups and I thought you were promoting outdoors
as "required".

Thank you. Having cats choose to live with you is not an easy road to
take. But the efforts, when taken, are more than worth it. Those
efforts not taken are nothing less than cruel.


======================================

I think most of the regs here agree with you on that and provide stimulating
indoor environments. I have 4 indoor cats and 2 mice. Even the mice have a
stimulating environment that changes every time I clean the tank. The cats
have more stuff than I do, and everything is very thought out.