And make outdoor cats illegal. An unpopular opinion no doubt. But from nature photographers to veterinarians, the outdoor cat is not good for anyone, including the cat.
Cat ladies are insane and organized now. In my city, there’s a group distributing shelters and placing them in various outdoor areas to keep feral cats alive over the winter.
They are as nutty as the pigeon feeders, except the cats kill everything in sight.
I think as society sprawls out and folks have fewer kids, this stuff gets escalated.
'Neuter and Release' programs are common, supported and sanctioned by animal shelters, usually local vets provide their services for free, and the point is to provide basic medical for the animals while at the same time trying to control excess populations.
Calling them 'Nutty cat lady vigilantes' would be like calling people 100 years ago providing shelter for abused women 'Marriage Wreckers'.
They were stealing pets and shaking down the owners for cash.
Also, air pollution makes them weak. Birds are much more sensitive to air pollution and CO2 level, because they breathe at much higher rate while they have much lower mass than land animals.
Boom-bust cycles for animals are common. I try to reflect what the natural order was 10,000 years ago and reflect. 20,000 years ago, there was an ice sheet over North America - ie no birds.
Predators are part of a feedback loop. That the predators in question are housecats makes it a somewhat unnatural feedback loop, but that doesn't necessarily make it bad.
Housecats are part of the food chain as well; they can be killed by cayotes and raccoons, and hawks might sometimes go after a small cat.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=outdoor+cat%2C...
But my cat likes going outside. He likes catching birds.