this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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Let's try not to take things personally here. I'm not twisting words, and I'm not claiming that you are either. I'm pretty confident the equivocation is an honest mistake.
We don't disagree on the definition of a domesticated species here. We don't disagree about whether cats are domesticated or not. The original comment by gmtom said, "graph would be better if feral cats were separated from pet cats. As the vast majority of predation comes from those feral cats." Note that the categories we are discussing here are feral cats and pet cats, not feral cats and domestic cats.
You respond by saying, "The reason they are the same group is that feral cats result from domestic cats, if there were not domestic cats, we would not have feral cats. They are not wild, native cats." The categories here have changed to feral cats and domestic cats when the original comment was about feral cats and pet cats.
You can conclude from this line of reasoning that separating the graph into the categories of feral cats and domesticated cats is inappropriate, but you cannot use this line of reasoning to conclude that it is inappropriate to separate the graph into the categories of feral cats and pet cats.
Using this argument to suggest that it is inappropriate to separate the graph into the categories of feral cats and pet cats is to equivocate two distinct usages of the term domestic. One usage means "a member of a domesticated species" and the other usage means "pet" or something like "non-feral domesticated." These are clearly distinct usages. In one case, the categories overlap, while they are mutually exclusive in the other.
We don't disagree on the facts here, so no number of sources could resolve this discussion one way or another.
I see what you're saying, I'm using domestic and pet interchangeably. That's because pets are domestic animals, the domestic cat is named that because it was domesticated. These words can all be used at the same time and are. Pets, domesticated cats, whose species common name is the domestic cat, are responsible for all feral populations in the US. There is no source for feral cats beyond the introduction of them by people. Which occurred through both pets and working animals in farms, shipping, etc.
I'm arguing with the other user that the graph isn't actually saying anything about cats, it's talking about windmills and the fact that pet domestic cats are responsible for 1/3rd of the bird killings on that graph is meaningless because the feral population does not exist without the domestic pet population of domestic cats.
The whole point of the graph is pointing out that no one gives a shit about how many birds cats kill, so why are we arguing about windmills using birds.
I'm not sure if we still disagree.
Yes, sorry. I suppose I could have been more precise from the get-go. That's what I get for using social media at work. I understand the desire to see the data broken down further, but at the same time, it does make sense to me to keep pet cats and feral cats lumped together in the context of analyzing bird deaths associated with humans. I think we're in complete agreement with that sorted out.
Yeah, I can be obtuse, sorry.