I’m not completely sure where you’re coming from with this, but this isn’t a suburb in Minnesota we’re talking about. These animals have been there for thousands of years. And the people feeding them, and petting them, and providing veterinary care when they can afford to, are the direct descendants of people who first began this relationship with the African Wild Cat.
If my hackles seem a bit raised, it’s because I know a lot about cats and I have had so many arguments with people about feral and free roaming cats. You would probably not be surprised that anti-free roaming attitude even seems to apply to cats living in places where there have literally always been cats outside. I keep my three cats inside. They’re all fixed and vaccinated. But I live in Oregon.
The world over there are populations of wild or semi-wild animals that have always had a relationship with the local humans, and Westerners walk in and suddenly it’s all, “You shouldn’t feed those animals, they’re wild, they have diseases.” Like, yeah? You think people don’t know that? You think Monkeys only recently started stealing from people in Mumbai? There are people in Ethiopia who feed hyenas and have for generations. They don’t own them, either.
And yeah, I looked it up. Domestic cats across Africa interbreed with African Wild Cats (among other wild small cat species). It’s a major threat to conservation. But only because the populations are growing and urbanizing in a way they never have before, which brings the two subspecies closer together. Unfortunately the public health infrastructure just isn’t there in many places, and the cost of living is too high to prioritize semi-wild pets. Although it’s also worth noting that conservation of genetically pure wild species is a recent and very Western idea to begin with.
