Internet has a hard-on for virtue-signaling and black-and-white perspective, and "adopt, don't shop" is one of those. There is nothing wrong with ethical, responsible breeding.

There is, however, a lot wrong with unethical breeding (e.g. doll-face persians, scottish folds, pugs, frenchies, showline GSDs, etc., and backyard breeding as a whole) and official breed standards set by people who only care about the looks and not the health of the animal.

there are millions of homeless animals, shelters are at capacity, and animals are euthanized by the thousands. paying money for something you can get for free is idiotic and unethical

i also feel this way about human adoption, but that's another argument

Outdoor domestic cats and wildlife: How to overrate and misinterpret field data

Yes but so do foxes, birds of pray, wild cats if your country has them.

As does the whole of the UK

Yeah I do find the discussion about indoor or outdoor cats to be very Americentric much of the time. Cats have inhabited England for longer than the English have for example, so I feel unless you happen to be a Brythonic tribesman in the Roman period it's a bit of a silly argument to have outside of 'new world' countries.

Also the British bird population has audibly crashed in my lifetime, cats didn't do that (or it would have happened literal millennia ago) it's much more to do with climate change and excessive industrial agriculture destroying the habitats and species the birds depend on, particularly insects.

Not who you're asking, but Bengals and other hybrid cats tend to be more dog like and require more playtime and even walks to burn off their energy. I would guess the right reason is because you want a higher energy playmate, not an exotic looking animal.

Only cat I ever really liked much was my neighbors savannah hybrid. Me and my dog would play with it all the time

I had to keep my cat indoors for several months after a surgery and he got severely depressed, even despite me spending all my free time trying to play with him and even taking time off work to look after him properly.

Then when he was finally allowed outside again he completely changed basically overnight and was so incredibly happy and playful.

I would take a slightly increased risk of them going outdoors rather than keeping them "safe" but with a lower quality of lifem