Given the natural abilities of a cat and those of potential predators, is it safer during the daylight hours or at night?

Depends on the predators in your area. Up here our woods are full of Coyotes, Bobcats and Mountain Lions and great Horned Owls at night.
My cats are never allowed out at night, only during the day. There are still Coyotes around on occasion but not in the immediate area where they hang out. In a city environment without larger predators nights would bring out other cats so fighting and potential injury would still be a problem if there are feral cats in the neighborhood and roaming dogs are a risk too.

Neither

When a domestic cat is allowed to roam freely, it is out of place. Cats are better suited for living in the wild than say,domestic dogs, but when they are out they are part of the food chain.

As mentioned above, the local predators are a variable, but a car will make quick work of a cat. Most places people live, have cars.

Other animals, toxins, and a cat’s curiosity, can kill them.

I guess I’m saying neither daytime, nor nighttime are the “safest.”

In my immediate area, the potential predators are cars, birds of prey, rednecks with guns, foxes, and stuffy old ladies with rat poison. In that order.

There’s actually quite a big collective of stray cats not far from my house. One of the strays I took in a few years back (he noped out of our house when we got the dog) lives with them. He still comes around my backyard to sun himself and play on my willingness to feed him, but considering he’s been a street cat for about 3½ years now and he’s about the size of a panther I’d say he’s doing quite well for himself.

Speak of the devil. I hear him out there right now.

Where I live it’s foxes, coyotes, bobcats and bears. Cars is a biggie, and a cat who is loose at night may cross a road to get to a place where there are a lot of rodents.

The cat we last took in, in the autumn of 2016, was in the school yard (multiple wooded acres with coyotes and other predators) for at least two years. I saw him over two years ago and then in Autumn 2016 we just plucked him up and kept him. He’s really tough but the vet said he was already fixed, which means someone owned him at one time. This is one tough cat, which I imagine is how he survived those years in the woods. Maybe the school personnel fed him and probably the fact that he had all those wooded acres to hang out in saved him from cars, but it’s a tough life for a cat to live outside.

Domestic cats are going missing here left and right. We have an increase in coyote sightings as well so it’s not hard to put 2&2 together. At least here cats are safer outside during the day.

Specify “it”

@stanleybmanly the cat.