Lemmywinks

I did highlight that I was mostly talking about p laces in which cats are native or naturalised, ie pretty much the entirety of Eurasia and Africa. The genetic differences between domestic cats and wildcats are essentially negligible. Please, please read the study I linked. My cats can’t currently get outside without my supervision, which is something my vet (in the UK, which has had domestic cats for around 1,000 years and wildcats for tens of thousands of years) was actually not pleased about.

Outdoor cats kill a lot of birds and rodents but - at least in the UK - they fill the ecological niche left empty by the wildcats, weasels, etc whose numbers have been decimated by humans destroying their habitats. Also, the prey species targeted by cats are those whose numbers are disproportionately high due to them thriving in the urban landscape (and the individuals who fall prey to cats are disproportionately elderly, injured, or otherwise compromised, meaning their predation actually increases the overall health of the population).

Seriously, read through the study I linked, dozens of sensationalist articles have been written demonising outdoor cats, but none of them take the time to actually interpret the data in a scientific way.

The cat charity I referenced was Cats Protection UK, and unless they have changed their policies in the last 2-3 years what I said about them is correct.

wreak havoc on native animal populations.

Cats only pose a threat to native animal populations in places where they are not native (or naturalised) themselves, so that doesn’t apply to the majority of the countries in the world. In fact, even in places like the Americas and Australia there is no good evidence that outdoor cats threaten local wildlife populations, except on small islands (source: Outdoor domestic cats and wildlife: How to overrate and misinterpret field data).

The UKs leading cat charity (for example) will not allow you to adopt a cat that you plan to keep indoors unless it has a health problem that prevents it from going outside, as keeping cats locked up their whole lives is deemed to be animal cruelty.