Culture
How Bad Is It to Let Your Cat Outside?
Your adorable house cat is also a ruthless predator. A conservation biologist makes the case for keeping cats indoors, or at least on leashes.
What does your cat do when it goes outdoors?
The question may linger in the mind of anyone who has an outdoor cat, and the answer has become quite a bit clearer in the age of YouTube and GoPro cameras. It’s not a pretty picture, though—just take it from this 2013 New York Times headline: “That Cuddly Kitty is Deadlier Than You Think.” An alarming study cited in that piece estimates that cats kill about 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals each year in the United States. About 29 percent of those bird deaths and 10 percent of those mammalian deaths could be attributed to house cats in particular, according to the study.