You know, we suddenly seem to have a LOT of loose cats in our neighborhood. I don’t know if they are feral or just house cats let run loose. In fact, I noticed all across the country this summer when we took our trip herds of cats were common. I have never seen so many. Maybe not enough pythons.
Domestic cats tend to get turned loose by owners in times of life or economic distress or, in college towns, at the end of the semester. Most soon fall prey to a combination of starvation, disease, injury, and predators, usually coyotes. Genuinely feral cats are a major cause of the decline of songbirds in the US and Europe, and in Australia, they exact a heavy toll on protected wildlife. One wallaby protection activist took to wearing a cap made of the skin of a feral cat as a way to both make his point and to outrage cat lovers.