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Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
Yeah, and if you love your children, you'll never let them out of their room where they're safe.
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Would you let your single-digit-age children run around outside unattended, coming and going as they please, vanishing for days at a time, without so much as a name printed on their shirt-tags?
Now ponder how much smarter and capable of dealing with situations a typical seven-year-old is than a typical cat or other domestic pet.
The key concepts are _unattended_ and _untagged_. Letting it out in a controlled environment, as in Lady Sidhe's example, is one thing. Just letting it run wild, on the other hand, comes close to my definition of "feral."
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If you go back and read the post you'll discover the cat could come and go as it pleased. It would come in to eat, drink and check on it's pet humans, when it wanted to. Living it's life as a free and happy critter instead of being "protected" by humans like the animals in the zoo.
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The cat is the pet of the humans, not the other way around. Protecting the cat is the humans' responsibility, not the cat's responsibility. If that doesn't sink in, then we are at an impasse.