[alt text: an illustration of a person with a head-empty expression on their face, who is saying, “Not letting your cat outside is CRUEL!” Around the person are various gruesome scenes of different cats in distress. From the top and going clockwise, the scenes include: a cat being carried away by a hawk; a cat that is on fire; a dead cat in the road that has been run over by a car; several dead kittens; a cat that is missing an eye and various patches of fur; a cat that is feasting on a songbird; and a cat that is being carried away by a coyote. The person appears to be completely oblivious to these scenes of distress.]
Just because some domestic cats can get as big as some bobcats does not make that the norm. Also, size is not the only differentiator, which is why I brought up breeding, food source, and habitat.
Domestic cats and feral cats are the same species, so I apologize for not making that distinction in the one sentence. It is an easy mistake to make, and you did the same thing in your next paragraph:
And went on to describe feral cats. That being said, I literally said feral cats were the problem. From my previous comment:
Talking about bad faith, the part you left out in the description of feral cats is:
That […] did a lot of heavy lifting in your version…
That is a 15% difference, which in breeding numbers is huge. And this is talking about number of litters, so doesn’t even get down to total number of kittens born (although litter size is pretty similar). Also of note, bobcats don’t generally start breeding until their second year. Domestic cats start at 6 months of age, which is why we fix cats as soon as possible.
Who said it was about responsible cat owners? Show me where I said all cat owners do this? Or OP for that matter? He has been responding to folks that literally say they let their pet cats outside.
The comic is about the health of the cats. Feral cats came up as a natural progression of that discussion. I don’t actually like the comic, but it isn’t about the health of wildlife in any way that I can see, but about the health of house cats. It is pretty well documented that outdoor cats do not live as long as indoor only cats.
Again, when did I say they are the same group? This particular thread was because someone unrelated said domestic cats would be outside if humans weren’t involved.