quote:

It may be that “nobody owns a cat,” but scientists now say the popular pet has lived with people for 12,000 years.

https://getpocket.com/explore/...source=pocket-newtab

“We think the cats sort of domesticated themselves.” “The cats invited themselves in.”

And they still invite themselves in even today, often choosing their households.

A “The Straight Dope” column topic once concerned taming versus domestication of animals. There’s a difference.

Source:
https://www.straightdope.com/2...omesticate-an-animal

“First, though, let’s make something clear about domestication. In brief, it’s not the same thing as taming, which is the easy part — what you do when you (e.g.) take a baby tiger from the jungle and hand-feed her through cubhood. By the end of this process, ideally, she’ll be amiable enough to star in your Vegas stage act.

But say that tiger then has cubs of her own. They won’t have inherited any of their mother’s ease around humans. Taming refers to learned behavior, whereas domestication indicates an actual shift in the animal’s genome that takes generations to come about. “

Another mystery about cats: I think they still don’t understand how a purr occurs.

quote:

Originally posted by RealPlayer:
“We think the cats sort of domesticated themselves.” “The cats invited themselves in.”

And they still invite themselves in even today, often choosing their households.

We've had several who have done that. Interesting personalities on those cats.

Stories of circus animals turning on humans and having them for lunch are legion.