Outdoor Cats: An Introduction

Abstract A moral panic over cats has gripped portions of the conservation community, with claims that outdoor house cats (felis catus) are wrecking havoc on biodiversity and public health akin to a zombie apocalypse. This is a mistake, a result of poor scientific reasoning and selective attention to data, or worse, pure demagoguery. The situation is more nuanced. Outdoor cats can cause significant harm to wildlife in specific ecological contexts, even when there is no evidence they do so across the board. And like all mammals, cats can be vectors of disease, even when they pose no threat to public health overall. Careful attention to the complex questions of ethics, science, and politics is required to understand how people, outdoor cats, and nature interact, and how we ought to thrive together. This special issue brings together a diverse set of articles from different points of view to address these issues.