I've thought about getting a pet turtle or tortoise [1] because they are my favorite animal, but I found out that in order for them to be happy and healthy they need a lot more room than I could easily fit in my house. Either a very large aquarium or a very large area for them to walk around depending on the species, neither of which I can easily have in my house.
And I think a lot of animals are like that. Ultimately a lot of these animals evolved in areas that really aren't that "confined" in any meaningful sense, and forcing confines seems kind of cruel.
[1] To be clear, ethically, not one of those shady endangered black market things that you can find.
Totally agree on more rare/exotic animals though - they shouldn't be subject to unnatural conditions like this.
Now, even if we leave our doors open he prefers to stay inside the house with his little brother Vicente, another cat we adopted. We regularly make new toys and play with them.
Vicente has been with us since he was around 1 month old (now 6 months old) so he's way more curious about the outside. We are preparing to start walking them out though I have a feeling we will have to drag Ramón out of the house.
I wouldn't feel bad for confining your cats to your house! They are probably very happy :)
This just seems obvious to me, but I've been around animals my entire life.
(I'm personally uncomfortable with birds being caged for long periods or in confined spaces, and I'm not offering the above as a justification. I don't own or live with any animals.)
Now, putting a dog in an apartment, especially when you're unable to give them constant exercise and attention. That's bordering on cruel.
That all being said, every animal has it's own personality. So it's best to match them with an environment that fits their personal needs.
And how do you objectively come to this conclusion? Could you say a human prisoner can learn to cope in a prison and present "psychologically" well, but it still feel like a form of torture?
One day Seven of Nine might be eaten by a raccoon but I’ve seen the GoPro footage, she has a blast every day of her life. As a side-effect benefit, she doesn’t play games with me because her entire world is filled with games she can play herself. We still sleep curled up together though :)
One of our cats has arthritis and before we got her treatment she didn’t like them, but she’s perfectly happy now.
Pretty sure cats love climbing things, and stairs are no different.
My indoor-outdoor cat only catches small animals if they run between her paws. But she did chase a rather large raccoon around the house once, as I did.
In my suburban neighborhood, we occasionally have coyotes. They are known to prey on fat cats (the feline kind).
My feeling is that predation by domesticated outdoor cats is overblown.
I also feel that small wild cats were likely native everywhere. Birds were probably not their primary prey; small reptiles and mammals, i.e. animals that don't fly, nest in trees, or live in flocks.
https://petapixel.com/2026/03/24/wildlife-photographer-of-th...
Then further down the page, "A sika deer carries the interlocked severed head of a rival male that had died after their battle". Nature, eh.
I’ll throw it back at you, maybe if you left that meeting you would find that it had less consequences than you are imagining.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cat-brains-have-sh...
We have some feral colonies set up in places like Miami and San Francisco, but not all species thrive in warm locations.
That said, my palm sized green cheek conure is rarely in his extremely large cage (it's 4 by 4 feet). Door is always open unless he's sleeping or we're out of the house. Usually he's with me on my shoulder when I'm working during the day and gives his "2 cents" when I'm in meetings.
Most parrots kept as pets prefer it locked for security reasons. He'll get anxious if it's not when he's trying to sleep.
I've seen a lot of terrible bird owners, but I also know plenty that enrich their bird's lives. My little conure has a surprisingly extensive vocabulary for a species not known for speaking.
He says "poo" when when he has to poop, "what's up?" when he greets anyone, "whatcha doing", "<his name>", "yeah!" (mimicking Little Jon), "stop" (when he doesn't like what we're doing), "good boy", "Love you" and a few others I can't recall off the top of my head.
As a side note, FWIW, we only let our cats outside when we are there to watch them. This is because we don't want our neighbors to dislike our cats for whatever reason. A lot of neighbors use Roundup on their fence lines. And, of course, car traffic.
He knows when we are leaving him when we say goodbye - the garage door opening - the car - the gate opening and closing.
During the day he sits in the home office with me and my office days he is around my daughter.
Most of the time he sits on the top or the side of the cage perching on wooden sticks.
Occasionally he will dismount if the gardening services are busy making a racket with the weed whacker and will walk to the bathroom and climb to the top of the shower.
The one cage is close to an outside gate so he will climb on the window or the gate itself during summer.
We also have 3 cats, but he just walks past them, and he talks and even scolds them in my voice.
Not saying there isn't and somewhat offtopic, but if you apply this to LLMs those are much, much 'smarter' than all the animals people like to call intelligent (or something similar). If you disagree, please tell me for which task requiring intelligence you'd rather have an animal's wit than that of an LLM.
I really do feel we should be taking the current state of affairs as a starting point to recalibrate what counts as smart or worth 'protecting', whether it's our beloved animal friends or something inorganic. Simultaneously believing "birds are super smart" and "LLMs are just stochastic parrots" seems absurd.
Navigating your way to a location without colliding with anything. Finding food in the woods. Such stuff that animals can do that we yet have AI be able to do.
I'm convinced that people that keep (uninjured) birds in cages are narcissistic sociopaths. This is based on the conversations that I've had with them about it. Life's too short to deal with people like that. I'm thankful for the indicator to avoid them, but I'm sad that it's at the expense of a bird.