Listener Jacob B. in the UK got in touch with a great question on our recent "Pet Ethics" show. He writes:

I am preventing my cat from staying out at night by limiting her food during her day so to make sure that she is hungry by night and returns around 11pm. It is for safety since foxes are roaming the area. Cats are nocturnal and I wonder whether I am depriving my cat of essential part of cat life experience.

我让雷回答雅各布的问题。Here's what they had to say:

许多为圈养动物(如动物园动物)设计的动物福利框架想当然地认为，自然行为和非自然行为对动物都是有益的。但这并不总是正确的。老虎在野外往往独来独往，但在动物园里成双成对地养会更好。猩猩似乎真的很喜欢玩电脑游戏，尽管这不是猩猩在圈养环境下自然会做的事情。(我从哲学家希瑟·勃朗宁的一篇关于动物福利的文章中找到了这些例子;you can read the article and look up the referenceshere.)

If there were no foxes around, your cat would probably enjoy her night hunting, so in that case, I think night hunting would be both natural and good for her. As things actually stand, there's an obvious sense in which night hunting is bad for your cat: it could mean getting killed by a fox, which would be terrible for her. So overall, I think you've made a reasonable tradeoff.

Some environmentalists question whether it's a good idea to keep an outdoor cat at all. (TheAudubon Society, for instance, has a "Cats Indoors" campaign.) Outdoor hunting might be good for the cat, but it's bad for the birds the cat preys on, as well as the predators that would eat those birds if the cat didn't! Here, I think, there's a deep question about what to value: should you care about individual birds, species and ecosystems (in which case lots of individuals might have to suffer in order to feed their natural predators), or your cat in particular (since she has a special relationship to you)?

Thanks, Ray, for the great response! And thanks, Jacob, for sending in your question!

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