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Turns out that's not a thing. https://duckduckgo.com/?q="proto+feral+cats"
Looks like neutered pet cats are just that.
Not all pet cats are neutered, those that aren't breed.
Where do you think feral cats come from then? They were not native to Australia (for example) until pet cats were bought over.
* https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-17/research-project-ding...
* https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-07/malupirti-springs-cam...
Neutered? Good.
Abandoned, not neutered? - Not Good, and heading toward a feral life.
A pet cat wandering free is not in the latter category.
Quick question, do you actually live under a rock, have you never spoke to rescue workers at Cat Haven, are you fully clueless about the numbers of "pet cats" that end up as not pets?
The vast majority of pets cats are neutered so they still don't go into the second category even if they get abandoned.
All un-neutered outdoor cats absolutely are potential feral cats.
Not all turn feral, not all abandoned - but all have the potential.
On this point I have actual life experience and have worked with town rangers and native conservationists who prefer their bilbies et al over the cats and foxes that kill them.
Introduced species left to run wild are an actual problem - although you appear to struggle to acknowledge that as fact.
Your reading of it is suspect.
All pet cats are potential feral cats - ones that are neutered will only prey on wildlife until they die without offspring. Cats that can breed will litter out wild cats if allowed to run wild.
It's pretty straight forward.
> All un-neutered outdoor cats absolutely are potential feral cats.
These are very different statements, are they not? And the main difference is the neutering.
Edit for your addition: > All pet cats are potential feral cats - ones that are neutered will only prey on wildlife until they die without offspring. Cats that can breed will litter out wild cats if allowed to run wild.
But proper pets being abandoned is rarer and they can be recaptured much more easily and they don't contribute that much to the feral population.
Neutered cats that lose their house don't usually become properly feral and even when they do it's not a big percent of feral cats as far as I can tell. It's a rare thing, outdoor cats are not "proto feral" as a whole.
Abandoned cats either wander about looking for new owners or turn wild.
You and I disagree.
Especially given that earlier crack about me "struggling to acknowledge" the idea of introduced species. You mentioned cats as an introduced species to someone else, not to me! And even then, a probably-deliberate release of cats 240 years ago into a cat-free land is very very different from modern pets in a land that already has lots of cats.
A number of abandoned cats do turn feral.
We know this, here in Australia, as most pet cats are chipped and when cats are captured rangers can test if they have been chipped (and whether the registered owners are still about).