Well cats do have a reputation for being manipulative. The problem I see is that there is probably a legit reason why dogs are said to be man's best friend as opposed to cats. Cats seem to lack that degree of companion value, and I can't think of any guard-like or protective value at all (I'm sure there are exceptions and newsworthy mentions). Growing up, my family has had a great degree of both cats and dogs, and the former never really seemed all that interested in my affection. Cats seem much more emotionally independent. Nor would I ever catch a cat giving two ****s about who is walking onto our lawn or strangers entering the house.
On top of that, there's not much of a reason to fear the small cats anyway. I mean they're more likely to run away from me than attack me. So as you can see where I'm getting at, the incentive for "domesticating" seems like nothing comapred to the dog. If anything, if we humans are willing to domesticate lions, bears, and any other kind of animal that may or may not show us affection/give us companionship, it just shows how companion-driven we are as a species. How emotional we are. Did the cats learn this of the humans by watching the dogs' interaction with humans? That'd be very sneaky o fthem
. They can get so much by doing so very little lol.
Now, I'm also not going to sit here and say that I'm percieving everything. There may be numerous benefits I'm not thinking about. One example would be what I mentioned earlier as a negative, not being emotionally dependent on humans may actually work for a lot of us that finds the attention-craving dog annoying.
It's just that with the little benefits I'm percieving at the moment, it makes you think about the possibility of the humans taking them in under their own free will. I'd really have to study the history on the behavior of cats to give an accurate answer. Particularly how they interacted with humans. If they just coudn't resist the smell of local campers's meals, then I'd imagine they could get pretty close since us humans most likely wouldn't have feared them, and maybe even shared with them. Actually, looking at a cat's present behavior, I can't imagine them approaching a human for any other reason than food lol (though arguably I guess, the same can be said for dogs).
How fitting lol.
