Would you let a cat or dog go free in the wild?

I have found pets let loose in the woods. A 50% chance of euthanasia, with decent food and care, is a much better outcome.

However, personally, I seek out no-kill shelters and support them. The Humane Society deals in sheer numbers and has lawyers, and so has specific guidelines for when to put an animal down that might still make a good pet.

In addition, those animals that do manage to survive in the wild can quickly become an ecological or health disaster. They prey on other animals and they can spread diseases such as rabies.

I’d take the animal to a shelter rather than chance it face prolonged suffering in the wild.

It’s a worse death sentence because there is nothing eu about that kind of thanasia. They suffer first, before they succumb to whatever will have killed them in the wild.

depends on what wild. If your’e talking about the real wild, where a domestic dog would have to compete with a coyote for food, and dogs are pack animals, the alpha animal would destroy him. A cat would fare better, but I don’t know how much.

Those are never the only options, but to answer the question I would definitely take the animal to a shelter. At least they will be fed and warm and taken care of until the final day. :(

I would think that a cat would have much better chances of survival in the wilderness than a dog. But I wouldn’t do that to any animal.

@tinyfaery You are right they are never the only two options. This thought just popped into my head.

Depends on where you live and how difficult life would be for the animal in that area. I live in the suburbs, and many cats get hit by cars because their owners abandoned them or let them wander free. I choose a 50% chance including food, water, and shelter over that any day.

depending on the type of dog/cat. But i doubt it, specially the dog because once you get emotionally attached to him it´s really hard to just let him go. not only for you but for the him as well. If your are good to them as they are to you, they will never leave your side.

I would not. I’d personally take in the dog or cat and try to find a home for it myself. If I couldn’t do that, I’d find a no kill shelter. If there wasn’t a no kill shelter, I’d take it to the humane society.

Euthanasia would be more humane than letting a domesticated animal try to fend for itself before (most likely) starving to death or dying from disease or injury. The thought of a slow, painful death is more disturbing to me.

When I was a kid, we had a pet rabbit. He was a dwarf bunny, and very cute. We’d had him for a few years when my mom decided he would be happier living in the wild with other rabbits. I was 12 or 13 years old, and she convinced me to take him out into the woods and let him go. I remember asking if he’d be OK, but actually believing my mom when she said he’d raise some baby bunnies and live happily ever after. When I got a little older and realized the rabbit had most likely been eaten by something else or died from disease or exposure once winter kicked in, I was pretty mad. Also guilty that I hadn’t known better at the time. That was a horrible thing to do. There was no reason for it, and to this day I wonder if my mom really thought the rabbit would be fine out there in the woods. :(

Well so far it pretty much seems like a consensus. Perhaps someone else could think of a more challenging question. Not that I meant this to be one. I just really like learning about people’s choices when it comes to animals and pets in particular. The would you save your dog vs. a human thread really got me going.

I think the argument against suffering is really a great one and I wish I would have thought of that before posting. It seems an easy choice when you consider that.

@RedPowerLady Actually, there are plenty of people who would abandon the animal rather than take it to a shelter. I’ve known a couple of people who drove off and left cats they no longer wanted. I grew up in a rural area with a lot of big farms, where animals like dogs and cats were usually seen as tools, not pets. A sick barn cat would be shot or drowned. They were never spayed or neutered, never taken to the vet. They either lived or died. Their job was to hunt mice and rats that found their way into the barns. Dogs were more highly valued, but still seen as property, not pets or family members. The jellies here at Fluther probably aren’t a true representation of the general populace. :)

And all of my animals were strays of one sort or another, typically those deliberately left uncared for in hope they would leave and go find another home, or those simply abandoned. Two were Katrina refugees, but the rest were and are local victims of owners who don’t care.

@MissAusten Ya I had heard of people doing this with cats so thought perhaps more people would say so. Perhaps it happens moreso when people live in the country.
I guess it looks good for us Flutherites that we don’t support those practices :)

If the decision was to let a cat go in the wild or turn it into a shelter, I’d let it go in the wild. In the wild, at least the animal has a chance at survival.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic – Only if it can find a new owner or a TNR colony to join. House pets really don’t do well long term on their own in the wild. They taste too good.

@Darwin The survival rate for the cat in question is already low. In the wild maybe the cat has a 25% chance of living 4 more years. It’s better survival odds for the animal than at a shelter.

That depends entirely on the shelter. I support no-kill shelters.

It didn’t sound like a no-kill shelter was an option in this scenario.

no-kill shelters are not an option in this scenario

Letting a house pet go in the wild is nearly the same as an automatic death sentence. Wild predators have had their whole life to practice.

In any case, a short, happy life in a shelter is probably better than a short, painful life in the wild being eaten by something bigger than you. In fact, the average life span of a feral cat is less than two years on their own according to this, while the life span of a house cat is about fifteen years.

Similar is true of dogs that live without human care. If these wild dogs don’t die of sheer starvation… diseases such as parvovirus, heartworm, or intestinal parasites usually kill them. Their average life span is one to two years. This is confirmed by studies cited in Stafford’s The Welfare of Dogs.

And there are the other factors, as stated here:

“Wherever cats are present they have immense impact on wildlife by
preying on small mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, threatening the genetic
pool of wildcat species through hybridization and acting as reservoirs in the
transmission of numerous disease, creating a health hazard effecting both wildlife and
human populations.”

In addition, “dogs, because they are social animals, will usually find other stray dogs and form a group or pack. These dogs quickly forget their human families in the effort to survive. Rural areas are sometimes plagued by groups of feral dogs killing livestock and frightening people.” Source. A survey by the National Agricultural Statistics Service in 1999 found that feral dogs were partly responsible for killing cows, sheep, and goats worth about U.S. 37 million dollars.

So setting your pet “free” is doing no one a good turn.

@Darwin Shelter life is far from happy, but it’s probably at least less stressful than the wild to which they are unaccustomed.

Letting animals loose into the environment is cruel and irresponsible. It happens often however because many shelters charge a fee to take unwanted animals. The abandoned animals are killed by predators, run over and often suffer before they die, starve and prey on smaller animals. In Australia where there are no natural predators, feral dogs and cats multiply at a prodigious rate and are decimating the small native animals. Many of which are now endangered because of this. They also prey on domestic animals. Farmers and graziers use poison and traps.

In America the problem is not as severe because there are predators. However, when I lived in NYC in the 70’s there were packs of feral dogs and cats roaming the alleys. It was frightening when they would come at me as I walked my dog.

So I would always advocate taking the animal to a shelter or having it euthanized myself rather than turning it lose.

The kill or no kill shelter is a difficult question for me. I have read Temple Ghandin and agree that animals sense their fate and react to those feelings. A dog in a shelter or a kennel is usually not a happy well adjusted animal, it is not a natural way for them to live. I don’t know if that is preferable to euthanasia or not. If I project my feelings onto them, I think I would choose death over life in jail which I think is a situation similar to living and dying in a kennel run.

Releasing an animal to “survive” on it’s own is cruelty. Both species have been domesticated, so “the wild” is not natural to them. While feral populations do form, it’s a brutal, hungry, disease and pain filled short existence.

I would never release a dog or cat into the wild. As a lot of people have said, these domesticated animals can and do live on their own without a human to care for them, but it is a difficult life and many die painful deaths, either by starvation, disease or injury. Euthanasia is a much more humane way to go.

We simply have too many feral dogs and cats in the world. When people don’t spay or neuter their pets and they run away, often the first thing they do is mate and create even more unwanted animals. Shelters are overrun with animals to place, and in this economy more people are giving up pets and fewer are adopting. In my area, at least two shelters have been shut down in the last two years because of lack of funding, making no-kill shelters harder and harder to find.

There is a section of the movie “Earthlings” that deals with stray animals. It’s a little hard to watch because of the graphic quality (it made me sick to my stomach at parts, and I’m not usually squeamish), but it shows the harsh truth about what happens to these animals. Some shelters without enough money to buy the lethal injection chemical (whatever it is) often “euthanize” animals in ways that don’t seem too humane, sometimes using a method that is basically putting them all in a gas chamber. As hard as this is to think about, it’s probably still more kind than letting them die out in the wild.

I wish I could aIf for some strange reason I decided to release a dog or cat into the wild, I would ALWAYS make sure it was spayed or neutered before releasing it. The last thing this world needs is more feral pets that will likely never find homes.

I live on an acreage with my SO and the amount of stray animals that show up is astounding. We are located about 45 minutes from a major city and have seen so many horrific cases of abandoned animals come through our property. All of which we have tried to capture and bring to the vet clinich for medical attention. Missing legs, ears, tails, gun shot wounds, porcupine encounters.

When a pet’s life has revolved around a human, generally they will seek out that same attention after being abandoned. I know that many people in my area do not value an animals life the way my parnter and I do; there have been so many cases of farmers shooting strays that cross onto their property for fear of them getting into garbage, livestock, homes and such. They do not know any better. They don’t understand the predators and their natural instinct is not the same as a born-wild animal.

I would much rather see all the abandoned pets euthanized an put to rest in peace, then have them show up on my doorstep in a state nothing short of horrible and cruel :(

- LB

Lurve to you @ElleBee

Thanks @tinyfaery <3 – LB

I’ve had cats trapped, then neutered, then put back right where I originally found them

Never! Domestic animals cannot survive in the wild. You are not “letting” it go free: you are just condemning it to a slow, horrible, frightening death.

My past cats have all been former feral cats. The conditions I found them in and the condition I found them in were both disgusting. It is a cruel is ignoble end for such a splendid animal to be “left to their own devices.” It really makes me “see red” when irresponsible people do this. Also, the damage feral cats to do the native fauna populations is overwhelming. Here in Australia there are a lot of small native fauna and the cats absolutely decimate them.

@theby – I just noticed where you are from and your avatar. So I have to ask, what do you think of the camel cull in the center?

@rooeytoo and @Theby – I was wondering how long it would be before the two of you animal-lovers met.

@Darwin – I am a little slow on the uptake sometimes!

You know how a quarterback throws the ball? My ex and I had a cat. My ex was angry one day and had been watching football on tv. He picked up the cat, took two steps back and threw that cat so far you COULD NOT SEE WHERE IT LANDED. I couldn’t find her.
A month or two later she came home—pregnant and thinner. Guys can be sorta mean when angry, huh? You’d never know it just from meeting him.

I totally agree with the general consensus. There are some things worse than death. HOWEVER, there can be exceptions. When I was a kid we had tom cat. Just a plain, yellow, short haired variety we’d gotten from who-knows-where as a baby. When the cat was about 4 years old we got a dog. The dog would follow the poor cat around biting at his balls. After about six months of this torment the cat moved to a new location, down at the creek (we lived semi in the country.) We only saw the cat on weekends. We’d be sitting on our deck and the cat would show up for some petting and human loving, and then leave again. Only on weekends though. The cat never asked for food. He hunted his own, and he was in fantastic condition. Buff, strong, muscles flowing. Touching him was like touching a board, and he was heavy with pure muscle. Our neighbor had a female calico. They tried and tried and TRIED for a litter from her with a male calico. They’d get so pissed because every litter came out with ugly, short-haired yellow kittens!
Four years later the ball-biting dog died, and within a week the cat moved back home.
About six months that my dad decreed that the cat had to go. (I have no freaking idea why—ah…he was probably putting his Tom-Cat scent all over the house….)
Well, my folks took him to the edge of town (about 5 miles) and dropped him off in the country. Six weeks later the cat showed back up at the house.
Then they took the cat literally 25 miles away and dropped him off. It only took him two weeks to make his way back home that time.
The morning when Mom walked out in the garage and saw the cat had come home for the second time and was waiting patiently for someone to love him, she burst into tears and swore he’d never be going anywhere again.
We had him for 10 more years.
True story.
BUT the cat was in the physical condition to survive it. Most domestic cats aren’t. If they were, they’d make it home to you.

@Aster There is no excuse for animal abuse. It often leads to violence against other people. Please do not label it as a thing men do.

@Aster Agree with @tinyfaery. Get out now.

@Val123 Get out now? We split in ‘85.
@tinyfaery You are right. Not only men abuse animals. I’ve only heard of men doing it but certainly women have also.

That’s so not the point.

GOOD @Aster!!!! Did he get abusive with you?
Also, @tinyfaery is making a good point. The vast majority of “guys” would not throw a living being across a room or out a window just because they’re angry. There is no excuse for that.

@Val123 Oh, definitely; many times. Hot head. He was outside and threw it way over the trees into a pasture in the distance. He had two completely different moods. Real sweet and out for blood.