I'm glad that you and your tomcat have solved your issue without the need for outside intervention, Rudolf!
My grandfather wasn't one of that kind of farmers, you depict, with an instrumental relationship to the animals. In respect to the view on the relationship between animals and humans, I think you get the history wrong, when we think of the production of livestock the past 50 years.
His farm was small and of a kind, that doesn't exist anymore - mind, this was before farming became highly specialized and was turned into an industry (yes, I'm that old - year 1962). Though, this development started, when I was a kid - when my grandfather retired, his farm was bought by a younger neighbour, who was expanding his new "pig-factory".
My grandfather knew, loved and cared for each of his animals. He would spend most of the night hovering over the pigsty, when one of his pigs were about to give birth, trying to make sure, that the mother pig was in no harms way, and that the newborns got to the tits of the mother, without in the process being squeezed to death. Of course there was a dual concern behind this: the wellfare of the animals, and because the loss of each little piglet meant a loss in income, that wasn't neither adviceable, nor in the long run would have been affordable.
Loving his animals, my grandfather just had a very unsentimental view on them. And unless we are speaking of cats of a delicate and highly sensitive (in)breed pedigree, I'm sure most cats would thrive better in a barn, roaming freely in and around it with their mates, chasing mice for food and fun, rather than spend their days being locked up in an appartment in the city and bored to death
