And your neighbors. Your neighbors could very well decide to kill your cat. Thats happened before.
I don't understand the bizarre hatred that so many people have for cats that makes them think this is ok.
I don't think it's necessarily a hatred of cats, these people just have some kind of disconnect in their thought patterns. Some pet-killers legitimately don't feel anything, good or bad, towards the animals, they just get a kick out of snuffing them out.
There are a lot of people who just hate cats specifically. I've known people whose cats were killed by neighbors, and heard many more such cases second-hand. Never noticed anything similar regarding any other type of pet, unless there was some practical dispute or feud with the owner. I know that indiscriminate torturing/killing of animals is one of the more broadly recognized signs early warning signs of a psychopath, but that's not a widespread thing that you expect to encounter often, especially admitted to openly. Yet I've encountered many people who openly profess that they kill cats any chance they get, always spoken with a spitting conviction. I've known people with cats whose neighbors pro-actively warned them never to let their cats outside or they'd shoot them. And when I was a kid, I overheard various classmates talk about torturing and killing cats, but never heard similar talk about any other animal.
And it's not a strictly rural thing. I've seen the same attitude professed by suburbanites and city-dwellers. But it's way more common among rednecks. I probably would never have recognized this as something more than a few isolated people if not for growing up in small town Indiana.
I've tried to get people like this to explain to me what it's all about, and the only types of responses I've ever gotten are either some matter-of-fact statement that cats are wicked disgusting creatures to be exterminated (expressed as if it's strange that I don't see them as similar to a cockroach) or some kind of weird, vague thing about how they're just unsettling, often referencing the way they stare.