Cats are indeed 'special' in that they appear to care absolutely nothing about anything beyond themelves.
During the 80s we took in two kittens abandoned by their mother in front of our terrace. I kid you not: the mother walked them past our place, looked up at our dog, a large Alsabrador with magnificent teeth, and decided, there and then, that she'd found them the perfect refuge. She simply vanished, never to return, mystifying her brood as much as she did us. So we had to feed 'em, provide an old wine box for bed, and take on a new responsibility where moving to Spain had, we fondly imagined, meant fewer rather than more of 'em.
That mother knew well what she was about: the kittens were both female.
In time, we were feeding about twenty-five or so cats, which meant buying junk from the butcher, lots of rice, making awful smells in the kitchen and filling a large cooking tray with the resulting filler each and every day for years. The society of cats we fed was in that odd state of being neither tame nor 100% wild. In time, one or two of them would actually jump up onto a lap when we were stretched out on the terrace on a lounger, but never the males. In fact. they wouldn't allow us to touch them in company of other cats, but were they alone, they seemed perfectly happy to be stroked. Macho rules everywhere, I'm afraid. But, whilst they lived as a gang, there was never any marking of territory on our property. But oddly enough, they are actually very prone to disease: so many died as kittens from what I see as a form of feline influenza: they just sneezed to death. Others picked up some eye disease that burst the eye like a grape. It didn't kill them, usually, but several of the old ones lived out their lives with a single eye. I doubt they would have made it without our intervention via the feeding tray. But one never knows. All I can say is that, wild or not, every single one had a name, and our hearts went thud at each and every death.
If there's a real problem, it's in their killer instinct: they denude gardens of birds. They even kill innocent lizards that stray too low down the wall.
Rob