The so-called Anthropocene has ushered in at least two major forms of anthropogenic disturbance and change to the lives of wild animals. In addition to the exponential loss of habitat associated with globalising economic development there is also the increasing tendency to take greater control over, and reorder much of the undeveloped and less disturbed habitats that remain. This is not all good news for all species, particularly those who have, for one reason or another, been subject to anthropogenic forms of mobility. Emerging modern nation states everywhere began to modify their modes of relating to wild animals that came within their borders, in part as a result of new subjectivities that responded to new objectifications of the world and its natures, and in part depending on how animals and their mobilities figured in their own nation formation. In this paper I investigate two objectifications of ‘nature’, ecosystem and landscape, and two types of nation formation histories, in Australia and in the UK in order to develop an analytical framework to understand why it is that attitudes and practices towards feral cats are so radically opposed in the two settings.