Helping Stray Cats On the Free market

TEH DEMAND FOR PETS, both cats and dogs, is way up in America. Pythons and piranhas, who can say? Although many Americans are still crazy enough to want pets that shouldn't be, perhaps, at long last, they are sufficiently sane to refrain. Demand for dogs and cats is a good thing, because in America there is usually an unwanted surplus of both. So, let's round up all the strays, spay, neuter, and adopt! Should be plenty to go around, what with millions of stray cats and dogs across the fruited plain. Obviously we don't want dogs and cats to become so few that they become ridiculously expensive and thus create a corrupt market, but neither do we want to return to the days when "animal shelters" were death camps, and millions of dogs and cats roamed free. Free aint bad if you aint miserable, but....I worry about strays, what they will eat and drink, how they will deal with the weather. A couple of years ago, pet free, I had absolutely no intention of pet ownership, until three cute straY kittens showed up, one at a time, in my yard, and wouldn't leave. Now I wouldn't trade them for the world. It makes me wonder about what would have happened to them without me, and about all the other strays in America. Is it possible for a stray cat or dog to live a reasonably long and happy life? Is it common?