Put a bell on your cat! Outdoor cats are responsible for a huge amount of ecological devastation, the least you can do, if you insist on your predator roaming freely outdoors, is put a bell on it to try and give local species a warning.

Do not put a bell on your cat, like ever. It is harmful to your cat's health.

It could be harmful to your cat's health if they don't like the noise of the bell. Not all cats are bothered by it though

The risk isn't the sound, it's catching on something. But, there are bells that are integrated into the collar, to prevent this.

They don't even work anyway. The cats are so good at walking without wobbling and the bells aren't loud anyway.

Cat's don't cause ecological devastation.

Cats as a species kill an emotionally large sum of birds and small mammals, but they don't radically transform ecosystems. It's human industry and habitat expansion that devastates ecologies, not their garden prowlers plucking the occasional bird or chipmunk.

I'd never bell the lad.

Only do this if you are certain that zero predators live in your surrounding area.

Seconding this. OP, by letting your pet to roam around and have fun you are contributing to the local fauna's extinction. I hate to see how Australia[1] is responding to this issue but something needs to be done

[1] https://theconversation.com/australian-shelters-and-pounds-k...

Where do you live that rats are bigger than rabbits?

I'm sort of laughing at the concept that we feel it strange that cats don't want to kill rats because of the size of the rats rather than the conversation leaning towards what are we doing that have caused rats to become so large.

In middle eastern cities I rarely see rats. But I see a lot of free roaming cats.

In western cities I see rats but no cats.

I suppose we’ve made our choice.

Honestly American cities would be so awesome with lots of cats around. Who cares if they're strays, they're animals.

I'd love animals with jobs in cities. Like raccoons doing trash sorting, cats hunting rats, maybe some monkeys to add random mayhem, etc.

I see plenty of cats and rats around western cities.

The cats tear through the local bird population, rather than the rats

Rats in NYC are mostly because they haven't invented "having trash cans" technology yet.

I'm talking about bunnies, not adult rabbits, and this is Northeast U.S.

The Norwegian rat (a/k/a brown rat, of Black Death fame) grows up to 28 cm (11 in) long, and weighs 140 -- 500 g (4.9 -- 17.6 oz, just over a pound).

Some individuals might be the size of adult rabbits of smaller species, certainly of juveniles.