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Comment by jibbit | Hacker News Reader

My cat gets stuck on the roof three times a day, or possibly has trained me to climb a ladder and carry it down three times a day

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I grew up in a house that was built into the side of a hill and it was easy for our cats to get onto the roof from where a roofline was near the ground. They'd regularly wander around and get up on the roof. And they would all quickly discover that the most effective way to get let in during the middle of the night was threatening to destroy the window screens if one of us didn't open a window.

All my sliding door screens are shredded, because the cat used them to get us to open the door.

Perhaps it has taken the term 'apex predator' a bit too literally.

One of the community cats in our area sleeps under our neighbor's solar panels on their 2-story house during the day, I've watched her walking around and ducking under them. I have no clue how she gets up there. Both that cat and another are regularly on our (1st floor) roof too, so they can sit under the bedroom window and interact with my indoor cat.

On the other hand, years ago one of my indoor cats escaped and climbed onto the roof and just sat there mournfully crying until we figured out where he was and got him down. Heck, the indoor cat I have now got herself stuck on the side of a not-steep hill because the ground cover was too loose and I had to climb up and get her.

I think it's just life experience, and indoor cats aren't the examples to judge the species by... any more than the avg sedentary human is when compared to people who actually exercise as much as we're all supposed to. ;)

A key criteria for being a "perfect" apex predator is to be dumb.

Smart apex predators rapidly lead to worldwide extinction events.

Not sure about "rapidly". We've been working on it for thousands of years, at least.

But we've rapidly advanced that progress within the last 100 years. All signs indicate that progress is gaining momentum, not losing it.

1000s of years is very fast in evolutionary terms

But we now grow the vast majority of our own prey which I don't think is normal.

How many skeletons of cats have you seen on roofs or in tree tops?

Wouldn’t birds or other animals get to them first? It’s also common that injured animals will crawl somewhere hidden to die if they can. I’m willing to bet many cats have died in trees or falling from them.

I'm quite sure that approximately no cat has ever died of thirst, hunger or exposure because it hasn't been able to get down from a high place. They will get over their cautiousness once they get hungry or thirsty enough. At most, a cat might fall badly and then die as a result of injury.

I’ve left it as long as I’m comfortable with.. about 12 hours in bad conditions. Not sure what else I can do

That’s not actually long enough. My cat got up a tree, which we couldn’t figure how to get up safely (very high on a slope with ground that was not stabile and nowhere near good access)

Took about 20 hours before she came down. Just before the tree surgeon was arriving to help get her down.

As they decay after death the bones fall and scatter in the process.

Sounds like you need a cat ladder: https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/2019/12/where-c...

Edited to add: or you could just leave your actual ladder in place. All three of my cats have learned to climb a human ladder (albeit only a short one, with 5 steps) - both up and down

My cat was great at climbing ladders, but terrible coming down. She'd usually trip herself up in the third or fourth step coming down and end up hitting all the others on the way. It didn't stop her climbing the ladder to explore the loft every time I left the ladder there for more than a couple of minutes, but it made it so I always had to go up and check for her because she'd never come down by herself after she learned that it hurt.

Hmm mine can jump off after three or four steps, so maybe that's the limit

It's the second one.

you can mitigate this by keeping your cat inside

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