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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsOur Cats, Ourselves - NY Times opinion piece.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/our-cats-ourselves.html?ref=opinion
(snip)
It's commonplace to call our cats pets. But anyone sharing a cats household can tell you that, much as we might like to choose when they eat in the morning, or when they come inside for the night, cats are only partly domesticated.
The likely ancestors of the domestic dog date from more than 30,000 years ago. But domestic cats forebears join us in the skeletal record only about 9,500 years ago. This difference fits our intuition about their comparative degrees of domestication: Dogs want to be mans best friend; cats, not so much.
(snip)
Domestic cats are not just wildcats that tolerate humans in exchange for regular meals. They have smaller skulls in relation to their bodies compared with wildcats, and are known to congregate in colonies. But in comparison with dogs, cats have a narrower range of variation in size and form.
. . . an author of (a) study, notes that domestic cats have excellent hunting skills, like their wild ancestors. This, too, supports the notion that cats are only semi-domesticated.
(snip)
Much more at the link. Enjoy!
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/our-cats-ourselves.html?ref=opinion
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Our Cats, Ourselves - NY Times opinion piece. (Original Post)
DinahMoeHum
Nov 2014
OP
Xyzse
(8,217 posts)1. That is a gorgeous image.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)2. That image is why we as a species love cats.
As someone once said, "the cat exists so that man may have the pleasure of caressing the tiger."
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)3. They really are "big cats" in miniature. One reason I love them.
Call me pretentious, but I would always think of the Blake poem ("Tiger, tiger, burning bright..." when I saw my cat stalking around out in the yard.