Unfettered? No. Feral cats often aren't cared for and live suffering lives. They have significantly shorter lives. They're domesticated animals and aren't suited to life in the wild. We bred that out of them. They fare better than dogs, but they deserve better.

I just buried one that some asshole dropped off near my house. My dog doesn't do well with cats and I found them scrapping in the yard. I pulled them apart, literally the cat had several claws stuck in my dog's face. I went out a few times to make sure that it was ok. After about 20 minutes it was gone. Three days later I go out to see my dog barking at the road. It seemed like the cat was back. Either running away from my dog or distracted by her, it lay dead in the road. It has been run over by a car or a truck. Blood everywhere. I put my dog in the house and scooped it up into a bucket and buried it with my shovel.

This wasn't just some feral cat. It was friendly and had known the love of people. Unfortunately, that love wasn't enough to do what was right. It deserved better. This happened about a month ago and it still bothers me.

Get your pets spayed and neutered. If you can't afford to house the results of your irresponsibility, then at least do right by them, and make sure they go to loving homes, instead of dumping them off at someone's farmhouse in the country.

[+] qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de -28 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah being homeless sucks, what does that have to do with cats reproducing?

Even if we assume that all unplanned kittens end up homeless, it's still some twisted version of financial cat eugenics. "Your life will probably not adhere to my standards of what a good life is, so I will prevent you from existing in the first place for your own good. I will cut off your balls because your kids would be homeless."

Now apply the same logic to humans. I know we are talking about cats but from a moral standpoint it should make no difference, the degree of "bad" might change, it's less bad if you do that to an animal and more bad if you do that to a human, but in both cases it's still bad. I can't think of anything that this logic doesn't apply to, even when it comes to something we do all the time like killing, if you do that to a human, that's murder, which is obviously terrible and if yo do that to an animal, that's acceptable, because we need it for food to survive but it's still bad. If we could get meat any other way I don't think anyone would be opposed to that.

If you don't want to get castrated by aliens\AI overlords then don't do that to your pets.

[–] Veneroso@lemmy.world 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Dude, cats don't have the ability to make rational decisions. They're pets. If you want to run a cat breeding house, that's on you. Just keep them inside.