The thread for flipping shits (and tables)

No animals were directly harmed in the making of my Fuck Cats opinion

but no seriously I think cats are horrendous and/or highly overrated animals. They routinely kill wildlife, and irresponsible owners in rural areas of New Zealand who won't get their cats spayed or neutered contribute to the feral cat population which contributes to the decline of many endemic, threatened bird species (They've also been shown to catch our native lizards and large insects). Cat ownership in New Zealand's been a hot topic lately because one big-name dude stirring up debate with rather inflammatory comments. It's raised some good points, but on the other hand there's dipshits calling this "New Zealand's very own Meowschwitz" because their cat's never dragged an (introduced) sparrow home. So yeah, it's more gross human stupidity and not cats specifically that's annoying me.

The whole grump led me to the realisation that I just... hate pets. The ones around my house belong to my flatmates (and I'm the sub-tenant, and honestly they're not that bad but I wouldn't exactly miss them if they got rehomed or whatever), and there's a white flemish giant rabbit which is blind, lives indoors, and poops and sheds fur everywhere. There's also a cat who is super-clingy and keeps sticking its arse in your face if you try doing things in the living room, and Pet #3 is the ex-flatmate's rabbit (blind bunny's littermate) who lives outside and has wrecked the front yard, attracting the ire of the landlord and facilitating an emergency flat cleaning before an inspection Monday afternoon. Failure to mellow the fucker out will probably make him raise the rent on us, which yeah no.

I also am not hot on domesticated animals after a week going and seeing birds in the wild. New Zealand is sort of an exception, because we don't have large predators and all the cool large things never evolved a fear of predation, so they just don't give a fuck if you sit down and watch them for a while. Despite that, it got me thinking that life would be so much cooler if we stopped spending all that money on the pet industry, and spent it on urban design which facilitated the return of wildlife into the world a bit more immediately around us.

The exception to "fuck pets" is dogs, because you can train a dog and make it behave and do what you tell it when it goes outside. You can't do that to a cat, short of keeping it inside its whole life (which I can only assume turns it into a neurotic needy freak like my flatmates' cat).

I may also be cat-biased because I get home from a long but fun week of wildlifing and exploring a new city, and find the cat's been sleeping on my duvet. And left a hairball on there.

I just really hate my flatmate's cat, I think.