[logifail]

> And it's obvious that a feral cat kills orders of magnitude more wildlife than an outside cat with a cat flap and consistent access to food

(Genuine question) source?

My impression from our neighbourhood is that outside cats - who also come and sit in our garden - are interested in birds because that's part of who they are, not just because they are hungry.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

Tame outside cats certainly still hunt, but it's really only a hobby. Feral cats hunt for survival. N=1 here, but in about 3 years of ownership my (formerly feral) cat has killed maybe 10 house/forest mice, 2 squirrels, and 1 small bird(he presents all his prey to me, and I keep a rough count to monitor his behaviour), and most of that was before he got a flap 2 years ago. Obviously a feral cat would need to kill a lot more than that just to survive. And he's a large Norwegian forest cat living on the edge of a forest. He could go on an absolute spree if he wanted to.

I think he hunted considerably more before the flap because it was often hard to tell for me he wanted to come inside. So he'd get stuck outside for longer and get hungry/bored.

If you want some hard data, this seems like a good starting point: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380