When we first moved to a Gemeinde just outside of Zürich, my wife and I were amazed to see these cat ladders coming down from balconies. We pass by cats on our walks occasionally, so they definitely use them. It probably helps that we're on the edge of the Gemeinde on a rolling hillside next to cow fields, fields used by sheep, and forest. Very little car traffic. On the other hand, in Zürich city proper I have not seen these ladders as I imagine it is not safe for a cat to be outdoors there.
I haven't seen outside cat ladders in Zürich, but I've definitely seen them in the gardens at the back of buildings. Perhaps "public" cat ladders are not allowed?
I´ve seen plenty of them in Zurich. Not at Bahnhofstrasse of course but in Wipkingen for example they are everywhere. I had one in my backyard and there were multiple street facing ones as well.
I often visit the cat sanctuary in Metro Vancouver and they have lots of very weird and funny 'cat architecture' pieces. https://catsanctuary.ca/
Usually these seem to come out of small little fix ups to make it easier for cats to do what they're trying to do anyway.
Plenty of ladders, catwalks and holes out to allow semi-feral cats the ability to dart of when someone walks into the room.
For example they have the 'dryer gang' of cats that like to sit on the dryer, and I've seen photos where there's like six of them trying to snuggle in there and not fall off, so of course the sanctuary responded by adding in a shelf above the dryer so more cats can linger around it.
My favourite bizarre piece of cat furniture is in a washroom where someone bolted a small skateboard right over top an electric baseboard heater, allowing a single cat to snooze there and take in all that heat.
I’m a crazy cat person who also lives in a neighborhood of a major city (Jamaica Plain, Boston). I have 3 cats. I have often dreamed of building them something like this, but the insane drivers around here have discouraged me.
My neighbor let’s his cat in and out through a small door he made into a back window, and she is the fattest laziest cat I’ve ever seen, and has never been run over. But I just can’t get over the car issue.
If it's any consolation, a friend in Zurich, Switzerland, who had two cats in a second floor apartment (third floor, by American count), had to ask for approval from every single neighbor in his medium-sized modern building, before he could build one such stair for his cats. Switzerland has a lot of regulations and procedures for things like this, and, the Swiss will have you know, this is what makes Switzerland great.
A few neighbors opposed the stair. My friend had to consult with a lawyer and go through some annoying process to argue that the opposing neighbors were a minority and he was entitled to build the stair. It may have had something to do with a technicality, such as the neighbors missing some deadline and thus failing to register their disapproval (unfortunately, I don't fully remember all the details).
In the end, he built the stair, but only one of his cats used it — the other one, the one with the twisted tail, would have nothing with it.
Four months ago, my friend went to hike the trails around Machu Picchu. His mother stayed at his place, watching the cats, mail, watering the plants, etc.. While he was abroad, a car ran over the cat, who died one or two days later.
I think the stair is still up, but now it never gets any use.
I know someone who had a netted cat run that went out a window and was suspended from a verandah so the cats could get fresh air, move between buildings, and watch the world go by without killing birds or getting killed by cars.
Given all the dangers to an outdoor cat, not to mention all the dangers from an outdoor cat (there was a recent story on HN about how domestic cats decimate local wildlife), there's really no reason for a cat to live anywhere but safely indoors. Keep your cats inside.
For some cats, this is cruel. Other cats tolerate a 100% indoor life with no complaint. I will provide my family's two cats as an example of both - both were raised by us from kittens, both raised to be indoors. They were both spayed, and my mother insisted on declawing them while they were under, just to prevent the scratching of furniture (which was very cruel. I was a child, so I had no input).
One cat (no discernible breed, long black hair) would attempt to jump out the door every opportunity that it got. Finally it escaped, and would periodically escape through pushing out the screen on any window someone would forget to close. Eventually, she disappeared entirely - likely she died, since with no claws she could not protect herself from the wild of this Rocky Mountain state. This is a painful reminder that declawing is a bad idea.
The other cat lives still (a Birman and/or Ragdoll variety, famously docile breed). It was always terrified of the outdoors and continues to have no interest in them.
How would you feel if you were forced to live in a cage all your life when you yearned to be free? For some cats, this is cruelty. Keep those inside that you can, and some of the damage you mention will be minimized.
> How would you feel if you were forced to live in a cage all your life when you yearned to be free?
How would you feel if you had to eat cat food all your life, like your ass clean several times a day, and never brush your teeth in your whole life? The point being that you don’t think like a cat and a cat doesn’t think like you: you’re two different animals.
Any animal would Ben Isérables in a literal cage. Luckily there are lots of things to do in a house and windows to look through. Not regally a cold steel 2 sqm barren space like a cage would be.
Sorry to be blunt but this is BS.
Keeping a cat indoors is simply cruel. Cats need space.
A house cat has a hunting ground around their home with a radius of 500m average. Male house cats can have up three times that even.
If you absolutely want to have a cat and live in the inner city either get an old cat that (unfortunately) grew up indoors already or don't get a cat at all.
Where are you getting these numbers from? Gwern[0], citing this paper[1] and John Bradshaw's book "Cat Sense" (note: I haven't read this book myself), gives much smaller numbers than that. Still much larger than what you'd find inside, but nowhere near the 500m (average!) or 1500m that you claim.
My sister reported encountering one of our house cats while riding her horse miles from our house. The other one never even made it as far as the horse paddock.
That is certainly not true of all cats. I and my family have never had a cat with a problem being indoors, even the one who spent his first year in and out.
Cats that go outdoors get maimed. Lost. Stolen. Attacked. Run over. Are obese from eating their home food, hunted preys, and fed by neighbors. Live on average 7 years.
Cats who stay indoors are much healthier, live 15-20 years, and are just as happy. Of course you need to play with them more so they don’t get bored, they need to have access to windows to look at interesting things all day. But it’s really only cruel if you expect your cat to live its own life without ever going outdoors. Otherwise they really don’t care.
Ask any vet what they think of letting cats outdoors, you’d be surprised.
And in the case of declawed cats: the pain can be so strong for the rest of their lives that it can drive them nuts causing all sorts of behavior problems. It’s illegal in a lot of places because that is cruel.
My last cat was an outside cat and was never stolen, only attacked once by another cat, got lost once (found by a kind stranger who rang the number on his collar), was never run over despite his habit of sunning himself in the middle of public car parking spaces (people used to wait for him to get out of the way), eventually got a bit plump when he stopped hunting as he got older and finally died aged sixteen.
So, who's anecdote is worth more? Or should we just agree that not all cats are alike, not all environments are alike
Yours is an anecdote alright. I’m glad your cat was fine outdoors. If you don’t believe me, ask your vet what they think they probably are much more knowledgeable than you or me on the question.
No vet I have ever spoken to has volunteered any opinion on my cat going outside. Perhaps this is common in the US but it certainly isn't in the UK and Norway.
When we got our cats from a breeder 15+ years ago we had to sign a contract that included a number of restrictions including that they'd be kept indoors - which we were actually fine with when we lived in city (they are utterly gorgeous pedigree Burmese).
We moved to a house with a fairly large garden in the country about 3 years ago and we gradually let them out - initially on leads, then supervised and now the one remaining one will go out occasionally when it is warm for a 'hunt' (he has never caught anything other than spiders and even then he doesn't know what to do with them) or to clamber along the walls and have a sleep in the sun.
Can you show me any numbers for this, broken down by type of area? Outdoor cats obese? I've never seen any here in Germany. Ever. Indoor cats: many. Cat's eat prey when they're hungry. And they can't hunt enough to get obese. They get obese when they have access to food all the time. This is an owner-made problem. When neighbours gave our cat food once for a while we told them to kindly stop and explained why and they did.
Attacked? By whom? Cats fight for territory; this is natural.
For every point you bring I can bring several anecdotes that counter it since I grew up in the countryside and with cats. And they are anecdotes -- just as what you said is w/o substance w/o any statistics. But here I go anyway:
Our first cat who lived until 17 years was wounded twice by other cats and once by rats. We had to have her treated only for the rat attack (antibiotics and some stitches).
But that's expected. I had several accidents in my life. Certainly, if I never left my apartment/home/house they could have been avoided. But maybe then I would be depressed or have killed myself already ... unless I had access to window of course, to entertain me ... pardon my sarcasm.
Seven years? I grew up on the countryside, village outside of Hamburg. We always had cats.
After the first one died a neighbour's cat choose my parents as new can openers because the neighbours separated and the woman took the cat and the children and moved to an apartment on the other side of town. The cat just escaped and ran back to his territory. After the third time this happened the woman gave up bringing him back.
He died four years ago at the age of 18.5.
Seven years? No evidence for this here. With all the cats of our friends. One just died after 25 years. And they live in a small town with lots more traffic than my parents.
Same goes for all the cats in the neighborhood of my parents house. I know most of them because they 'visit' as their territories overlap.
Yes, we had friends who took two kittens from us. They lived next to a big road outside the village. After both got ran over by cars they stopped trying to have a cat (instead of opting to have on inside their 350sqm house, mind you). So it's a case by case decision for outdoor cats too.
There are many factors that affect life span of a pet. I would be very careful with correlating indoor/outdoor as you do.
Happiness: definitely. I've never seen an indoor cat w/o issues. They're minor when they have good owners and care but they are always there.
Besides, personally, I'd rather have a shorter, happier life, than a long dreadful one. That's just me and I can choose.
I go out lots, I drink alcohol, I drive a motorbike on freeways and a bicycle in rush hour traffic. All factors that are shortening my life expectancy. I choose so.
Pets can't; no one asks them.
But I would know what side of the answer to bet on if we ever can.
Declawed? I never even heard of this. I do not think this is even a thing in Germany.
I have two friends who are vets. One of them owns two outdoor cats. Never asked them what they think about this.
Imho the choice to keep a cat indoors or outdoors often reflects the character of the owner. People who are more fearful in general, of the world, of their wellbeing, of things that could go wrong, tend to be over protective. Of children, pets, themselves, etc.
As such: it is probably no coincidence to read misconceptions like yours in the age of helicopter parents. Beers!
and particularly in Germany and a few other countries it is considered "cruelty against animals " (unless if performed for medical reasons)in local laws also:
In my home village (South Eastern Germany), "outdoor cats" are the norm and nobody would even think about locking their cats indoors. The cats from different homes hang out together, have their little fights from time to time, make very loud love in summer nights (which is the only slightly annoying part), or get into furious disagreement with a weasel and other wildlife "invading" their territory in the village.
Very rarely, a cat is run over by a car, but by far most cats seem to be smart enough to avoid cars (and human drivers also usually seem to be smart enough to avoid running over cats by driving somewhat responsibly).
This is fun survey. I'd never heard of anything like this before on a larger scale, but a friend in small city in New York has some ramps set up to let his cat out the window and down a story from the roof to let his cat roam. I'd love something like this for my cat but think I'd end up with a fox or a skunk wandering in uninvited.
i put up about 20 cat stairs/platforms on the inside of my apartment, along a whole wall and wrapping around my breakfast nook, comprised of 4 main paths and 3 different entry points. there are 2 cat beds, a cat grass planter, and 2 sunning platforms incorporated. it was a fun project and my cat (and former cats) loves it! when she gets the zoomies, she'll do laps up and down the stairs out to the other room and back.
i should note that these swiss cat ladders were a partial inspiration, having run across a similar article a few years ago.
"Once an outdoor cat, always an outdoor cat." That is true in many cases, but there are exceptions. One of my cats is a rescued feral -- he spent the first six months of his life outside, but has been an indoor cat (as all of mine are) ever since, some 13 years on, and has never shown any sign of wanting to go outside.
Our cat was an indoor cat for 12 years until we moved to a house with a garden - now he is quite happy to wander about our garden but never goes outside that area unless we are with him. I was quite surprised at how territorial he is - e.g. chasing neighbour's dogs out of our garden.
I think "outdoor cat" in this context means a cat that lives inside with a human but is allowed outside, i.e. a cat that spends time outside but still has a safe place to call home. A feral cat is quite a bit different, and I'm not surprised that a previously feral cat would greatly value the safety and security of an all-indoor life.
We have 1 cat that is "internal" i.e. can enter the house (and is normally given food inside) but of course is free to go outside in the garden and 3 cats that are "outdoor" cats, meaning they won't enter the house but are always around the house and are fed as well (outside).
Seems strange to me that you've named it as a rip-off of atlasobscura when both articles clearly credit the book "Swiss Cat Ladders" [1] as the source of both the information and the images.
I live in Switzerland. There are plenty of cats and plenty of birds as well.
I think this is because Swiss cities are fairly small and fairly green. There are plenty of places birds can go that are safe from cats and other predators and a forest is never far away.
Cats have been in Europe for thousands of years by now[1]. My guess is that birds have adapted. As others mention, I've only very rarely seen cats catching birds around here.
[1]not to mention the wild cats native to Europe, although of course in far smaller numbers.
>> As others mention, I've only very rarely seen cats catching birds around here
That's exactly opposite of my experience - my mum has two cats that only live outside and I'd say that on average they bring at least 2-3 birds every week + 4-5 mice. Them hunting rodents is great, the birds not so much.
In Europe, the danger for (song)birds are not cats, but rather glass front buildings, soil sealing (by roads and buildings), and in rural areas a drastic lack of biodiversity as farmland is ever more and more streamlined with no bushes or other patches of wild soil to provide space for wildlife.
Exactly! In the end it is the man who's the culprit. Birds and cats and coyotes (who occasionally eat cats) learnt to live together for millions of years.
Does your cat catch birds? I have had cat(s) for most of my life, currently two. They are proficient hunters, they can catch rodents and lizards and wasps, even a hare once. But never have any one of my current or previous cats caught a single bird.
I wonder, if the “common wisdom” of cats really catching and killing so many birds really is true?
Yes, if you live somewhere with lots of birds. I grew up on a farm in country NSW, Australia. We almost always had dogs. A couple of cats visited for brief periods, and we'd constantly find dead birds on the verandah on their backs with the ribcage totally eaten out. So we never had cats for long, it wasn't really possible, unless you were to never let them outside.
Yes they do. I vacation in Costa Rica a few times a year (my parents have a house there so we stay at the same place) and there was a cat that wandered the area. She was an outdoor cat, but liked easy to obtain people food and/or cat food if people had it.
Every time I would go down there, she would kill birds, usually right near me. I could sit on the patio and I'd hear a scuffle and next thing I know there she is with a bird in her mouth. She'd present it to me by leaving it at my feet for a bit, then she'd pick it up and either play with it for a bit or just start eating it. She'd eat the thing whole: feathers, beak, bones and all. Sometimes this would happen multiple times in a week (and if we weren't around when she did it, she'd leave it out until we saw it, then eat it). I can only imagine how many she'd get when we weren't around.
My cat catches plenty of mice (and leaves them to me to tidy up, ugh), but no birds so far. We've got a bird feeder in the back yard as well.
Back in my parents' house we also had a cat, he'd catch a bird on occasion but it'd be our neighbour's pigeons that had just come back from a flight from France.
We woke up one morning to find the bloody remains of a white dove on the lawn. Then a couple of days later there was another dying dove in the middle of the road.
We put a bell on our cat after that - although at the moment she's only being allowed out in the mornings just in case someone with Covid pets her and she brings it in on her fur.
Cats have a fascinating territorial timeshare system. We have outdoor cams set up and there's steady cat traffic along the main garden path at all hours, often with one cat stalking another just out of sight - with occasional face-offs and mewling matches to claim a new slot.
Anecdotally, my cat has a balcony deck that he hangs out on from Apr-Nov, it’s about 4m off the ground. (no stairs or cat ladders down)
He has managed to kill two birds over a few summers. There are no bird feeders or anything a bird would want on the deck, cats are just very good at killing things.
The corvids like to hang out on the utility wires near the deck and yell at my cat, he doesn’t mind too much hehe.
Cats have instinctive behaviors to catch three kinds of prey: mice, birds and fish. However birds are a bit harder to catch than mice, and a well fed cat who didn't get to watch his mother hunting them may never become proficient. But proficient ones catch quite a few birds.
Source: my parents cat caught a lot of birds. Also I think Catchwatching by Desmond Morris.
I know it is a scientific study published in Nature that the NPR article is based on. Cats kill birds, I have zero doubts, cats kill lots of birds, that’s likely. Cats kill as much as that estimate says, I have significant doubts. For multiple reasons:
Whenever a predator kills a bird there will be traces such as a bunch of feathers and inedible parts at the location of the kill and/or consumption. Never seen a single one of those.
It is a single estimate, never replicated.
There are hundreds of starlings, tits, and other small birds in my neighbourhood. It’s not like birds are a scarce resource. Nether do they seem especially held back by the local cats.
> there will be traces such as a bunch of feathers and inedible parts
When my family lived in Hugo MN (north of St. Paul), we regularly saw feathers and other remains left by our cats. Occasionally they would leave a bird (or mouse) half dead on our kitchen floor... as an offering? Note that cats might not leave a lot of remains when they hunt, and the sometimes hide the parts they do leave.
Also, while our cats regularly hunted birds, the local blue jays liked to hunt our cats... for sport. The would send one bird out at one end of the yard as bait, and wait for the cat to start hunting it, creeping slowly towards the bird. Then another bird (or several) would suddenly dive bomb it from behind, dropping 20-25 feet strait into the cat's rear end. Our cat would end up launched (and/or leaping) 6+ feet in the air.
Animals must die all the time with minimal evidence left for humans to see. The lack of bodies is just indicates that the animal was rapidly consumed. Whenever I have seen dead birds outside they never last long.
My cats aren’t/weren’t subtle when they catch and eat prey. Neither are birds of prey or other vultures, when devouring another bird.
The cats I own and had over the past decades have gifted me hundreds of dead of half dead animals. Some of those cats were prolific killers.
I never witnessed a successful bird hunt, never received a bird as a gift. And most importantly: If there is any single animal which can easily leave traces of inedible stuff like feathers, down, beaks, claws — it’s birds. I never even have found traces of a killed bird, on the ground or in scat.
Despite this, I have no doubt cats kill a lot of birds. It’s just that a lone study with p<0.1 (rather than the classic p<0.05) is so far removed the reality I actually observe I can’t help but to have my doubts.
Mine does in Kent in the UK. I'd say he catches more mice and voles, but I'd say he gets a bird a week. Especially in the Spring when they are fledging.
You can see varous survey of bird sightings at this website https://www.ornitho.ch/ . I am unforunately not a good ornithologist (or ornithologist at all) to know which species produce sound; however if you filter sightings in the last 15 days, then by canton (select "BE", which is the two letters code for Bern), then look for Bern (Bern is the name of a city but also of a canton, just as there's NY and NYC), then you will see there's at least 20 house sparrow in Bern city.
In light of the other comment about ample green space in Bern, and how songbirds have refuge because of it, we should consider whether cats killing songbirds is a more suburban phenomenon, and if so, why.
Given that both cats and songbirds have been around for much longer than suburban lifestyles, could the flatness of nothing-but-Kentucky-Bluegrass lawns be to blame?
Cats won't impact bird populations that much, nature balances itself well enough - assuming there's enough green areas where birds can nest, of course.
Plus, it helps control the mouse population as well.
The first week of quarantine we built a “catio” as we’d wanted one for a long while. Great family project as I got to teach the kids the basics of construction. Basically a large, three-tired chicken coop style structure the cats can access via a window. Cats as definitely happier to have the outdoor time. We have also used a cat stroller in the past (we aren’t crazy cat people, honestly ;-)) but this is a better solution so the cats can choose how much time to spend outside.
That's great for the cats. But it looks a bit over engineered. Nailing a curved piece of wood to the wall would also do the trick. Cats are very good at climbing trees.
We had something like this inside of the house. From the cellar to slightly above the floor so the cad door could be installed in a way totally unvisible from outside. The cat could duck under the outer skirt of the house and use the door and then the inside infrastructure to go eat and do private buissness.
