THE POWER OF THE MOG
It may occasionally infuriate we humans, but our pet cats’unwillingness to bend to our will might just be their most impressive attribute
Nick Harding never thought he would own a cat, never mind fall head over heels in love with two of them, Alvin and Barry. But that is what happened.
In A Tale of Two Kitties, he reveals his own personal cat journey.
PAWS FOR REFLECTION
When I reluctantly ventured into the cat world, four years previously, I did so with my eyes shut (mainly because of the allergies).
I had no idea about cats, their history, their needs and their personalities and frankly, I wasn’t interested.
But cats get under your skin and I started to realise that owning one comes with a unique set of responsibilities.
True, they are not as demanding as dogs, but they come with their own special requirements and behaviours and, historically and culturally, they are still learning to live with us and us with them.
As a domestic animal, they are relative newcomers and are 5,000 years of familiarity and hundreds of generations away from where dogs are today.
Cats prize territory and often solitude. Their hunting instincts have not had a chance to be dimmed by time and they need to express these most base of behaviours.
Domestication, it appeared to me, has always been about bending an animal to human wills. Horses are broken in, dogs are trained, traits are selectively bred out from breeds’ bloodlines. Cats, in the main, have stubbornly resisted our attempts to pacify them and turn them into something they are not, which perhaps is why we create our own versions of them on the internet and give them personalities that we project onto them.
AN INDEPENDENT PET
Meanwhile, in the real world, cats live with us, but separate from us. Of course there are always exceptions to this rule. The pedigree cats of the cat-fancying world are very much connected and reliant on their owners. But the vast majority of everyday moggies in homes all over the world are living their own lives, doing their own thing and are largely behaving the same way their ancestors would have done thousands of years ago.
We like to think that our cats love us because we love them, but in truth, it is and always has been a very one-sided relationship. A cat’s wild instincts ensure it always has the ultimate get-out clause (claws): self-reliance.
We like to think that our pets are part of the family and that is partly true. They live in our homes and we shower them with attention and, in many cases, with love. But that love isn’t unconditional, particularly with cats.
Are they equal members of the family? Naively, perhaps, we like to think so, but while there are plenty of stories of humans putting their lives at risk to save their pets, most of us would agree that in a choice between a human life and a pet life, the human will win every time. Our pets may be citizens of our world, but they are second-class citizens.
In future, as selective breeding favours cats more attuned to domestic living, perhaps natural instincts will dim and felines will go the way of canines and become more reliant, obedient and eager to please.
This is likely, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing. But in a world where man increasingly puts his mark on the natural world, their bold defiance and ability to remain what they were – not what I wanted them to be – has been both remarkable and admirable.