Housecats are a threat to the environment whether or not they belong to responsible owners (I saw a documentary about a study conducted in England fifteen years ago that demonstrated this convincingly; the average indoor/outdoor housecat has a dramatic effect on local wild bird/rodent populations). If you genuinely fear for the ecosystem you would do well to advocate the end of pet ownership(as PETA and other such organizations do). Somehow I doubt that's your agenda.
In any event, responsible folk who find truly feral cats ought to take them to a shelter where they can be treated and put up for adoption and then put down humanely if those efforts are unsuccessful. Allowing people to shoot any stray cat who wanders through their yard is plainly wicked.
"In any event, responsible folk who find truly feral cats ought to take them to a shelter where they can be treated and put up for adoption and then put down humanely if those efforts are unsuccessful."
Uh, yeah, you go out to a rural county where a third generation feral cat who has never been declawed or touched by humans lives. Talk in a soothing voice to the cat as you attempt to pick it up. Feel the cats claws in your legs and or/ stomach as you realize it doesn't want to go with you.
Besides, a guy living out in the country who has a chicken coop now has to take a couple hours out of his day to pick up a cat and take it to a shelter because some idiot from the city dumped his unwanted litter of kittens off in the country several years ago?
Sorry, what a wimpified nation this has become. For hundreds of years land owners who encountered a pest that was harming his land and property dispatched the pest in a human way- with a shot of lead. They weren't "plainly wicked". They possessed more knowledge of nature and common sense than the cat fanatics do.