The toll-booth employee was a contributor to the problem. People who feed feral animals are extremely irresponsible. If the guy wants a pet then he should buy/adopt an animal and properly care for it. Feral animals are nobody's pets.
There’s one curled up on my bed right now that might disagree with you. ;o)
BS. Most people (like me) who feed them -—trap them and get them fixed first.
Just a thought....
If the cat was being fed, then it is unlikely that it was a serious thread to any birds, endangered or otherwise. I currently have four cats, and while they like to "hunt" they aren't particularly serious about it since the activity isn't required for food. In over 15 years I've had to rescue one starling (shoulda let the cat eat it).
Whew, that's amazing! Just don't understand people like you. I've got 3 feral cats that I've had for 5 years. They've become wonderful much loved pets.
“People who feed feral animals are extremely irresponsible”
I feed feral cats on a semi-regular basis and am not irresponsible. I feed them a mixture of dry cat food and Prestone though
I respectfully disagree.
I know a very nice woman who...owing 3 indoor cats herself...has been feeding a colony of feral cats on the grounds of her employer, IBM...for about ten years.
She recently told me the number has decreased from a high of about 30 (they split into 2 colonies) to about 13 today.
I myself trapped a feral male and paid to have it neutered and vetted...and then released it. We called him "Streets".
I moved away, but recently saw my former next door neighbor who has built an outside, heated cat shelter next to his porch steps.
Here's a photo of "Streets"
Not if they make sure the animals are spayed/neutered (as this cat was). I leave dry cat food on my back porch, both for the benefit of my cats, who enjoy eating outdoors, and for visiting neighborhood cats. Few of the visitors are feral, but all visitors, feral or not, get fixed if they aren't already. So far I've gotten fixings done on one feral (who I adopted, and is now more or less domesticated), and two "owned" cats whose irresponsible owners were letting them run free without being fixed.
The natural preditors in the gulf range have been thinned out to the point of extinction, I’m guessing here from the red wolf and puma. Preditors are critical to the health of a prey species. They kill the sick and the weak leaving the stronger animals to breed. If wolves, coyotes or pumas were wandering around down there, they would eat up the feral cats in no time so I’m guessing that these cats are taking the place of the natural preditors and need to be there.
And btw, our couch potato cat Bob routinely kills birds, rabbits and ground squirrels. It saves on cat food and keeps him healthy.