In article , Frogleg
wrote:

Strictly speaking, cats aren't "domesticated", meaning substantially
changed from their wild counterparts and bred for the benefit of man.
While hundreds (thousands?) of dog breeds are quite different from
wolves in physiology and habit, cats are more "tamed" than
"domesticated." Simply going where the food is doesn't imply
domestication. :-)

The kittenishness or infantilism of adult cats makes them very different
from any wild cat. The desert sand cat & the Afghan mountain cat look
exactly like domestic cats, but even if hand-raised are largely
unmanageable (the domestic cat is likely descended from these two). A
southeast asian fisher cat, or south american jagurundi, though small
enough to live loose in the house like a domestic cat, cannot be so kept,
for they will never cease to be nervous in captivity & if loose in the
house like a domestic cat, hooboy, they'd hide constantly & only sneak out
from behind the kitchen stove at night to destroy all your stuff. A bobcat
can easily crossbreed with a domestic cat & the resulting half-bobcat can
be a perfectly reasonable housecat, but the bobcat itself cannot. So
really, a few thousand years of domestication has changed them
dramatically.

That they can become feral in a trice is not unique among domestic breeds
& no indication they are unchanged. Horses & burrows also revert to the
wild with great ease. Domestic dogs can form very dangerous feral packs. A
good argument could be made for horses not being substantially different
from the wild animals first domesticated above the Black Sea; & the fully
domesticated Indian elephant is also unchanged from the wild forest
elephants they once were, & could still live on their own except the
forests they require no longer exist. And the camel, domesticated long
before horses or cattle, is no different than a wild camel. Pigs go feral
with spectacular ease even though domestic strains bare little physical
resemblance to their wild cousins. But cats & dogs can live IN the house
because of a infantalism such as makes them permanant human "child
substitutes"; to impose that level of infantalism on any of the wild cats
would fail utterly & result in an awful house pet, whereas infantalism
imposed on wild canines, though possible, never makes them save toward
anyone outside their "pack" even if their pack is a family of humans.
Domesticated cats & dogs & cattle are very changed compared to their wild
counterparts, more than for horses, asses, ducks, chickens, rabbits,
gerbils, ferrets, elephants, or pigs.

The measurement for domesticated pets would be degree of infantalism that
does not exist in wild counterparts. Coyotes outgrow puppyish dependence
and playfulness in ways that labrador retrievers do not. So too
kittenishness of mature domestic cats cannot be achieved with a fisher cat
or oscelot or desert sand cat, all of which make splendid pets until they
are no longer kittens, then are holy terrors inappropriate for mingling
with people. Yet even a second generation feral cat can be domesticated
with just a little bit of patience, because that capacity for permanent
infantilism has been selectively bred into them for thousands of years.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/