> People used to understand this. That’s why it was no big deal to drown sacks of kittens <
And their reward was more rats, and the Black Death.
https://owlcation.com/humanities/Cats-and-the-Black-Plague
I was thinking more specifically of America in the fairly recent past, especially farmers. They would have a certain number of barn cats they would keep around for pest control. Anything more then what they needed would be killed. The reason?
I speculated that if the cats were allowed to reproduce with no controls they would soon spread out and eat all the small animals or the small animals would be driven away. No small animals means no small predators. No small predators and no small animals means no large predators. No large predators means deer reproduce. Too much deer reproduction leads to crop devastation.