Things you were shockingly old when you learned

no, but John Phillips's dad was a retired Marine Corps officer.

He also went to the same high school as Jim Morrison and Cass Elliot, though several years earlier.

Just found out a partial reason for why I've always been a bit hazy and confused on the regions of the Mediterranean and its surrounding lands: The ancient region of Ionia is nowhere near the Ionian sea! The former is ~ the west coast of today's Turkey, the latter between the footsole of Italy and western Greece.

I feel like a complete maroon, but the other day, I learned that the word "jagoff" has nothing to with masturbation. Because I'm not from Pittsburg.

so what is it from?

Ursula Le Guin & Philip K. Dick went to Berkeley High School at the same time, but didn't know each other

Probably for the best

Ursula Le Guin and John Steinbeck once got drunk under a bush together at a wedding. (I learned that one from her last essay collection.)

That Sting’s “Englishman in New York” is not autobiographical.

brace yourself for some followup news about Shinehead

that there are lots of people (guessing this is a US thing?) on the internet who do not let their cats go outside, ever, and are SHOCKED AND APPALLED that some other people do.

lol whaT?

the cat owning equivalents of people who keep their dogs in cages and always on the lead.

even if you were a cat owner in some crazy mega-city where you daren't let them out it should be comprehensible that other owners have a cat flap and it's all good.

my dad lives in a bungalow in rural Herefordshire and has three cats and I'm just laughing at the idea of keeping them all locked inside, you couldn't even open the patio doors!

i would guess most new york city cats haven’t been outside in years. which kind of makes sense if you live on the 5th floor of a tenement. or i dunno maybe people walk their cats??

cats really love jumping several stories to their glorious deaths! so i suppose in the city I can see some people being overprotective...

If cats aren't allowed outside in NYC, my Brooklyn neighbourhood didn't get the memo. I might write them one saying "Please do not shit in our backyard".

Ooh a back yard, lah di dah

The last place I lived where I had co-responsibility for a good number of indoor and outdoor pets, over half of the outdoor cats (plus a dog that got out of the yard) were hit and killed by traffic. One cat would only very hesitantly step outside before fearfully darting back in like a mole person. But then we also had a cat who would go 'camping' in the woods for days at a time and come bouncing back covered in mud and happy as a lark. In my experience, outdoors only works for some cats.

cats are pretty terrible news for local wildlife, i say lock 'em all up

Our cat, Tuffy, goes out in the yard on a short leash. He talks to the birds, but he poses a much greater threat to the grass, which he consumes voraciously.

When I was living in Paris, I knew plenty of people with "chats d'appartement". The cats though would get obsessed with the outside and I heard of several that jumped to their deaths from balconies. I used to watch one from my vis-a-vis, leaping from one narrow ledge on the fifth floor to another on the fourth.

I’m guessing the “shocked and appalled” part comes from the meat-grinder-like effect of outdoor cats on local wildlife rather than concern for the cats themselves. Let them play in traffic for all I care, just put a bell on them.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380

I don't let my cats outside because I don't want them to get hit by a car or pick up feline leukemia. I'm not going to be a dick to people who let their cats out, but I think it's safer for them to be inside.

Today I learnt that the word "dunce" and the "dunce's cap" were named after followers of the medieval Scottish theologian John Duns Scotus. Formerly held in high esteem by the Catholic church, he and his followers (the Dunses) subsequently fell from favoiur during the Reformation. Apparently Duns Scotus advocated the wearing of conical hats to improve thinking (literally "thinking caps"), and this might be where the idea of wizards wearing such hats comes from.

of course SCOTUS was involved

Our cat makes for a terrible outdoor cat, but that doesn't mean she doesn't try her absolute hardest to get out. She will be upstairs, curled up asleep, and hear the front door open and suddenly shoot outside like a rocket. We try really hard to keep her from getting out, but it's almost impossible, esp if you are ever trying to negotiate the door carrying any object.

Ooh a back yard, lah di dah

Welcome to east Prospect Lefferts GARDENS (aka Pigtown) my friend.

We have indoor cats in a demiurban setting. I am both aware of, and not particularly outraged by, the existence of outdoor cats.

As NickB and Dan I noted, however, cats are known to be pretty destructive when it comes to birds and other wildlife. But I don't pursue this argument with my friends who let their cats out. I am not going to change their minds and they're not going to change mine.

Also, we have an indoor cat who got out accidentally once, and didn't return on his own. He was eventually found a few blocks away, behind a 7-11; we don't especially want to repeat that experience. If I could trust him to go out and come back, I might feel differently. Cats differ.

guessing this is a US thing?

Not just a US/Canada thing, no. I've witnessed it in several European countries.

What I see frequently in my Brooklyn neighborhood is cats chilling on the sidewalk while their humans are hanging around nearby. Clearly there's a mutual understanding that the cat is not gonna suddenly bolt down the street. Then there are the bodega cats, which often wander out onto the sidewalk, but they have little incentive to go far - why would they when they live in a literal house of food. I have seen cats being walked on a leash/lead but that is rare.

Seems that the "keep your cats inside 24/7" idea has grown in popularity in the last 20 years, with more stories coming out about their effect on bird populations. Growing up in the 1970s we never thought of that, our cats went outside whenever they wanted to.

it's my expectation of life in the UK that you will have a garden into which various neighbourhood cats will often wander (also the occasional fox and very occasional muntjac) but having lived in Prague/Beijing/Guangzhou/Zhuhai, where most people live in flats, I know that this is not the universal state of things. In China you sometimes see cats being walked on leads.

I live in an area of the country that is Lyme Disease central and would prefer not to have cats going out and bringing ticks inside.

this is the thread I saw this morning which started this, just no idea that this was a hot issue online.

No, cats are not supposed to be outdoor animals. It greatly shorten their lifespan as well as it having a negative impact on local bird populations. Keep your cats inside or walk them on a leash if you must.

— Nova🍓He/e (@RealityBent) May 22, 2021

Yeah not really into having my cats get in fights with the dozen or so local strays, or getting mauled by coyotes, or getting a bunch of cactus thorns in them

xp

I feel like getting an "outdoor cat" now just out of pure spite towards these people!

Get an outdoor cat and refuse to let it come indoors, so it's truly an outdoor cat.

"cats are not supposed to be outdoor animals"

however you feel about letting your cats be outside, this is obviously false

I feel like getting an "outdoor cat" now just out of pure spite towards these people!

― calzino

The Larry David school of pet ownership.

do agree about their negative impact on bird populations. In that Elizabeth Kolbert extinction book she wrote about how there is a correlation between bird extinctions in regions and humans reaching them with their cats, that stretches back thousands of years. The little furry murderers!

there still seems to be a whole lot of birds, crows for instance

Crows can handle themselves

My mum once wrote a letter to the newspaper about how cats should all wear bells to warn the birds.

god's perfect little killing machine, chaotic neutral.

a friend puts a colorful collar on her indoor-outdoor kitty to alert the birds.

I struggle to square my full understanding of how much of an ecological disaster my cat is, how much he is contributing to vertebrate deaths in my area, and the fact that I love him to bits and he's a brilliant companion for my kids.

Fwiw, it's clear to me that his outside life is rich and detailed and I wouldn't dream of keeping him inside - even with the full knowledge that our last cat was knocked over and killed.

People who can't get over the idea that animals eat other animals shouldn't be allowed to have pets.

My cats don't have fleas, they don't have ticks, they don't disappear for days on end, and they very likely will never be run over in the street.

the cats I see are sometimes socialising in gangs of 4 or 5, have fights, rip open exposed bin liners to look for bin treats, are predating on birds, or just chilling out on top of sheds and always generally seem to be up to no good but essentially very pleased with their outdoors lifestyle.

Imagine Top Cat indoors. It just wouldn't work.

The person who posted the controversial tweet says the cats are living in a fool's paradise:

"But my cat likes it outdoors!" is not the excuse you think it is. You would not let your cat eat poison if they liked it would you? They are not able to understand the danger and harm so you have to take the responsibility.

— Nova🍓He/e (@RealityBent) May 22, 2021