Homeless?

<SNIP>

"Unencumbered by human slaves"?

    *boggle*  No it doesn't.  'Fear' is nowhere involved with
feral.  Feral comes from the Latin 'fera' which means 'wild animal'
which comes from the Latin root 'ferus' which means 'wild'.  Fear is
from an Old English (and hence Germanic) root 'faer' which meant
'disaster' or 'calamity' but not (interestingly enough) the emotions
engendered from the event.

    Feral is a perfectly nice, perfectly descriptive Latinate word
that encapsulates the state of a feral animal.  They have returned to
a wild state from domestication, hence they are feral.

Orchid
See Orchid's Kitties! -- http://nik.ascendancy.net/bengalpage
Want a Purebred Cat?  Read This! -- http://nik.ascendancy.net/orchid

...> We need to develop a nicer word than "feral"...The problem is it has
"Fear"

"Feral" is a word that specifically describes a domestic animal that has
reverted to a wild state.  It does not apply only to cats.
Unfortunately, many people misuse the word feral to describe any cat that
appears to be homeless.
I believe that the word "stray" more accurately describes many homeless
cats, which are usually former pets that somehow ended up on their own. To
many people, this cat, which may be merely frightened and confused, can
appear to be feral. This can be fatal to a cat who ends up in the hands of
those animal control or other people who make decisions to automatically put
down feral cats.
Some people who work with feral cats use the phrase "hard stray" to describe
a cat that is between domestic and feral.  Personally, I think it is a good
idea because it recognizes that it is not an "either/or" situation and there
is a gradient from one extreme to the other, and, depending on the
circumstances, a cat can move from one level to another.
Annie

How about "homeless," but I'm so late in this conversation I've bet you've
made your choice by now.  I believe the word feral is derived from
ferocious, which is even more unfortunate than fear.  Bottom line is, a
feral animal is a domesticated species that has been introduced (in the
case of cats, substitute abandoned) in the wild.  Honey bees are feral, by
the way, introduced by bee keeping Europeans.

Sharon Talbert
Campus Cats