Kent, I realised that no one has responded to your link -
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/494590/20130725/france-woman-savaged-cut-artery-feral-cats.htm
and I wonder if anyone has any comments having read this article?
Ferals cats even getting close to humans is quite rare and I can only think that they were very threatened, maybe by the dog, maybe by other passers-by previous to this girl. They are most likely unneutered, so could be protecting babies?
Any other thoughts??
I have seen feral cats galore when I spent a lot of my working life in Lima in the 1970s and 80s. There was (probably still is) a real rabies threat. Whilst a poor country, and I lived and worked in one of the vast shanty areas, people did in fact have pet cats and dogs. However there were many that went feral. Feral and domestic cats out of the house mixed and in places there were groups of perhaps 30 or 40 of them. They coexisted with humans. Taking your point about dogs Lynn, I never saw or heard of anything but dogs kept well clear. When they went feral and formed packs, those packs were smaller than the 'gangs' of cats. Trouble is, I suspect, being here in Europe it is only one extreme or the other: loyal, well behaved house pets or feral monsters, but people cannot see coexistence and such things as common sense and keeping cats and dogs apart in that equation.
I don’t really know what to think! An attack seems so unlikely to me. I could imagine it was more of a defense than anything else. Feral cats don’t usually let you even come close.