[kbatten]

Surely there is also instinct at play here. A cat raised in captivity still can hunt mice and if its released into the wild it could survive and reproduce. And of course there is the famous california condor story where they are now all either raise in captivity or decedents of those.

[meric]

Survival data were available for 169 kittens. Overall, 127 of the 169 (75%) kittens died (n = 87) or disappeared (40) before 6 months of age. ...Eighty-one of the 169 (48%) kittens died or disappeared before they were 100 days old.

Well, some of them are bound to make it... http://pets.stackexchange.com/questions/9571/can-cats-surviv...