Although I agree with the message that fuzzy-feely altruism can benefit your own well-being and motivation to do high impact altruism, I cringed a bit at the title. Please consider feeding only sterilised stray cats. Thanks ^^′
Otherwise, by feeding a fertile stray cat you contribute to creation of more starving, diseased cats. So even for the fuzzy feely altruism it is important to not just see what you want to see (the one moment of a pleased stray cat you interacted with), but assess relevant (future) consequences to not cause more suffering.
Actually, sterilising would be the more valuable doing than feeding, but that again may not be a fuzzy feely altruism anymore, as the immediate reaction of the cat certainly will not be gratefulness. And we usually need (immediate) gratefulness of other beings to create the desired improved mental well-being for ourselves and motivation.
We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality.
Although I agree with the message that fuzzy-feely altruism can benefit your own well-being and motivation to do high impact altruism, I cringed a bit at the title. Please consider feeding only sterilised stray cats. Thanks ^^′
Otherwise, by feeding a fertile stray cat you contribute to creation of more starving, diseased cats. So even for the fuzzy feely altruism it is important to not just see what you want to see (the one moment of a pleased stray cat you interacted with), but assess relevant (future) consequences to not cause more suffering.
Actually, sterilising would be the more valuable doing than feeding, but that again may not be a fuzzy feely altruism anymore, as the immediate reaction of the cat certainly will not be gratefulness. And we usually need (immediate) gratefulness of other beings to create the desired improved mental well-being for ourselves and motivation.
There is also the problem of the detrimental effect of a cat population on birds.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
To be clear, this was an indoor foster cat, formerly a stray.