Please don't post flamebait or start flamewars on Hacker News. We're trying for better than that here, and this one was pretty bad.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: it looks like we've had to ask you this many times before and also that you've made a habit of posting unsubstantive comments to HN. Could you please not do those things any more? We'd greatly appreciate it.

How about leaving the cat alone?

They are natural animals, not our property to "train" and enforce our preferences upon...

If you don't like cats hunting birds, don't own a pet cat, as to not sponsor the artificially inflated proliferation of domestic cats.

If you do want a pet cat, respect it.

How about not letting your invasive species drive other animals to extinction for sport? It’s nonsensical to call it a natural animal, and completely ignore the fact that they live nothing like an animal in nature, and have their population artificially supported while they decimate other species for sport. A house cat shares 0% of the life of a ‘natural’ animal.

If you want to own a pet cat, don’t promote irresponsible behavior that intentionally harms the environment. Attempt to have a modicum respect for things that exist outside yourself.

> Attempt to have a modicum respect for things that exist outside yourself

Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how strongly you feel about cats. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended when posting to it?

It’s not a binary choice between owning a cat and letting it wipe out as much of the native animal population as it can. Again, encouraging people to let their animals wipe out populations of wild animals is wrong, and doing it because it allows your domesticated animal the freedom of feeling ‘natural’ is a supremely selfish behavior.

Or don't let them out.

Indoor cats live longer and don't have problems with parasites, pregnancy, diseases, fights, poisons, predators, cars, stupid humans, or just getting lost.

Or ideally just don't buy a cat at all, since they carry toxoplasmosis and their scratches are linked to depression(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4700762/). Every time a cat owner commits suicide I can't help but wonder if that could have been easily prevented.

Correlation does not imply causation and there still isn't enough evidence to support the claim that cat scratches are linked to depression.

From the abstract:

"Authors suggested that infection with cat parasite Toxoplasma could be the reason for this association."

From the conclusion:

"Absence of association between toxoplasmosis and depression and five times stronger association of depression with cat scratching than with cat biting suggests that the pathogen responsible for mood disorders in animals-injured subjects is probably not the protozoon Toxoplasma gondii but another organism; possibly the agent of cat-scratched disease – the bacteria Bartonella henselae."

Not exactly a smoking gun.

Shit dude every time anyone commits suicide I can't help but wonder if that could have been easily prevented.

There are a bunch of studies showing that pet ownership is beneficial for mental health.

>Every time a cat owner commits suicide I can't help but wonder if that could have been easily prevented.

There are close to a billion people with cats, and like a few tens of thousands suicides, that include tons of people with no cats at all.

Especially since even your article says "Cat biting and toxoplasmosis had no effect on the depression, and the number of cats at home had a negative effect on depression (p = 0.021)."

So, only cat scratching does? As if the people with many cats at home don't get scratch? I wouldn't place much emphasis on a single study of questionable quality (given ample empirical evidence that there's no big deal).

"Cats cause suicides" border on "no vaccines" territory...