When I was a kid, that still used to be the norm on farms. There were farm cats and house cats. The farm cats were there to kill rodents and otherwise minded their own buisness. You could not just take them up, they would have bitten you. I think this has gotten out of style, as I have not seen the division nowdays and all cats seem to be gotten tame.
Barn cats are still a thing, but they are typically still owned and kept whereas I was talking more about free roaming cats that live around human settlements. The early free roaming cats would have been about as tame as barn cats; my impression is that the cats of Istanbul are more friendly.
