Who Owns Whom? A Puzzling Animal, the Cat

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Who Owns Whom? A Puzzling Animal, the Cat

"Meow meow, hi there!" Almost every morning, I talk to a furry, cute, white and gray loveable animal, a cat, my neighbor, walking around our apartment’s porch. In spite of my paying "great regards" to the cat every time, it deals with me so capriciously, which disappoints me most of the time while a person passes by me with a dog wagging its tail and showing its love to the owner. Nearly every time, the cat glances at me and goes back to its "work" almost ignoring me. But I cannot give up talking to it every time I see it. Its look, voice, and appearance are enough to carry away me. Once in a while, it replies to me, or comes to rub against my legs, which satisfies me a lot. At such times, I feel that the cat likes me as much as I like it. Its furry soft feeling and power of rubbing against me are just so comfortable.

But, what a mistaken idea this was! According to Fogle, cats often rub against humans to put cat scent for their territorial marking, or to let other cats know that they visited the place (78). Nevertheless, this puzzling animal is becoming the most popular pet among humans all over the world, or perhaps because of its puzzling character, humans have been enslaved by this furry little animal for a long time. In spite of the popularity of having a cat as a pet, its mode of life is still a very riddle, while most kinds of the domesticated animals are already documented. Bradshaw mentions that domestication of a cat is unusual compared to other domestic animals. Cats are not domestic species "made" by man such as dogs, and also they are not an animal trained for the purpose of helping man’s work, such as an elephant. It is more likely that cats themselves accept humans as part of their lives (6). Perhaps this is the reason why a cat’s mode of life is still behind a veil in spite of its important place among humans. "Cats are domesticated, but it was the cats that domesticated themselves." It is obvious that cats are nearly perfectly domesticated, or at least they look as if that they are having perfect relationships living with humans, but it was not humans that domesticated cats.

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