throwaway_99999

Domestic cats as a species had been introduced to America by humans, and still are explicitly kept and feed by humans. I'd call that breeding. This also sets an easy and natural metric of how many cats should be there: 0.

Brilliant! If murder was legal, we'd see a lot more of it, don't you think?

We are way past this point. This huge population of cats exists solely because we are breeding cats. Besides that, we are killing lots of other, apparently lesser animals, in order to feed them to our cats. What do you call this, if not playing god?

That would be counter-productive. The main driver of cat population are humans. Cats evolving to being hostile to humans might in the end diminish public opposition to extermination programs.

In contrary. It is you who doesn't like to admit it. Makes sense in a way, as cats are our cute pets and thus emotionally much closer to us than random wild birds. Ironically, those huge cat populations are caused by humans, so in the end humans indeed are to blame.

From https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380

"Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals."

Unfortunately. Going hiking with dogs hurts the delicate wildlife. Wild animals as well as free-roaming farm animals are very stressed out by the pure presence of these dogs, let alone by being chased. Especially near larger cities this puts enormous stress on those animals. Turns out, you can't have it both ways, being an animal lover and being a dog lover...