Yeah, that’s exactly right.
As for the second part, I’m not sure how to answer. Squeezing the partner is without a doubt adaptive, but squeezing anything that is roughly the same shape is a byproduct with no (strong) evolutionary pressure. Now, the question is whether functional necrophilia is adaptive or just a byproduct is very difficult to answer, but I lean towards byproduct.

Adaptive here means whether necrophilia occurs in order to still produce offspring, i.e. it’s ‘conscious’ (I use that term veeeery loosely here) or if it occurs just because the animals don’t recognize that the partner is dead.
I remember a paper about a frog species (not sure if it was the one from the meme) where the males participated in necrophilia, but they basically tried to squeeze eggs out of anything they grabbed. Living female, dead female, stone, sponge. All the same.

Damn, I’m getting flasbacks from that. I had to make a presentation whether functional necrophilia in animals is adaptive during my master studies. I had to read so many papers discussing the details. Conclusion: not enough evidence to conclude it’s adaptive.

Edit fun fact: in the 1920s there was an Antarctic expedition funded by the British Royal Society. The scientists described necrophilia in emperor penguins (I think), but the Society refused to publish the research to not sully the image of the animals. The paper was finally published some time after 2000.

Feline urine has a relatively small effect compared to feline saliva or fur.

The only strange thing is that buying the single Mignon eggs is cheaper than the pack of four.

I’ve failed to get that to work. How do you actually get additional languages?

I don’t know where the hostility comes from, but here is a good review article that has a global overview of the impact free-ranging cats have: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.10073
It calls out several studies from the UK that do highlight the impact of cats on the wildlife.
An additional interesting point is chapter 4.4 “The interest of cat owners”:

Studies show that many cat owners are opposed to banning the free roaming of domestic cats, although the degree of this opposition varies between countries (Ash & Adams, 2003; Crowley et al., 2019; Lilith et al., 2006; McDonald, Maclean, Evans, & Hodgson, 2015; Thomas et al., 2012). Several UK studies are particularly illustrative. According to Crowley et al. (2019, p. 18), cat owners ‘rarely perceived a strong individual responsibility for preventing or reducing’ predation by their pets. Likewise, McDonald et al. (2015, p. 2751) found that many owners ‘do not accept that cats are harmful’, including owners of highly predatory cats, and moreover found that providing owners with ecological information regarding cats’ wildlife impacts does little or nothing to change their views.

You can’t compare the impact of actual native wild cats with the impact of domestic cats. It’s such a huge difference in numbers.
As you said, some areas have wild cats and the ecosystem is tuned to that. But even in those areas the comparable extremely high numbers of additional predators (domesticated cats) is damaging to the wildlife.

They are still mesopredators. A big bird of prey, a coyote, or a fox wouldn’t mind going for a cat.
But it’s not even relevant for the discussion whether they are apex predators or not. They are efficient predators and the artificial high number of individuals is harmful for the ecosystem.

There’s an enormous difference in the natural occurrence of native wild cats and feral or roaming domestic cats.
No one is arguing against native wild cats being around, but against artificially introducing a mesopredator into the ecosystem.

As a “professional ecologist” you should be aware of the concept of “landscape of fear”.
Non-consumptive effects have an equally strong (some argue an even stronger) effect on prey populations compared to consumptive effects.
Letting domesticated cats roam freely creates an unnaturally high predation pressure in the area and has more effects on the local wildlife than just killing it.

I would have been more understanding if it was always on the level of two extra cans of soup or comparable.
But 2 lbs of pine nuts is not balancing the scales, that’s abusing the system.

I mean I could understand (but not necessarily approve) if it would be a few everyday groceries here and there. But pine nuts? 2 lbs? Sorry, but that’s just ridiculous.
I can completely understand if people have to steal food to make ends meet. It’s a tragedy that they have to do it, but it’s the system’s fault and not theirs.
But OP doesn’t seem to fit into that category.

Oh come on, really?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care about some big chain losing some money, for me it’s a matter of principle to not fuck with the system unless really needed.
Two cans of soup, I don’t care. But pine nuts? Cheating the system for some “luxury” goods and not some essentials is pretty low.

It says Jyväskylä University. Jyväskylä is a city in central Finland. The picture is from their research station in Konnevesi.

Oh that’s random, I’ve been there! Edit: OP, if you’re still around Konnevesi, say hi to the boys (Jyrki, Janne, Risto)

I second GitHub Pages! I host a professional website/online CV there with a dot com domain for less than 10€/year. There are Jekyll templates to do that or pay someone to make you some custom CSS and Html that’s easy to maintain.