Cat-lore

[Anonymous]

I read an interesting article by National Geographic about the
devolution of modern house cats, which traditional wisdom had long
presumed to be a close, albeit feeble, offshoot of one or another
pristine African species of large carnivores. It turns out that the
typical dimunitive feline did not actually descend from African
tigers and leopards directly, despite their apparent similarities.
Although they do appear to be a dwarfed version genetically,
lacking size, speed, strength, acuity of vision, intelligence and
all the other vital skills needed for vigorous competition in
naturally hostile environments, the house cat is now understood not
to be simply a diminished mutation of natural selection, nor to be
a desirable outcome of deliberate and careful selection and
breeding for more tolerable traits of domestication.

Rather, the modern feline has been found to be not so modern after
all but did in fact emerge over 50 thousand years ago as an
aberration of a tertiary lineage of dilapidated cat hordes
emigrating from their larger rivals in Africa to less hostile
territories in what is now known as the Middle East. Being unable
to compete with stronger types of animal, and unable to find even a
desperate niche for coexistence in the wild, necessity forced them
to migrate to the relatively sparser desert area to the north,
where they would have to eke out a paltry existence for survival.
The scarcity of natural resources and food in this unacclimated and
scanty domain, and their disadvantage of natural skills suitable to
such an environment, eventually wiped out all but the smallest and
least ambitious of them.

Then, as they were nearly expunged by the inevitability of natural
selection, there came about a disruption in their demise by humans,
which retarded what would have been an otherwise timely riddance.
As fate would have it, the nomadic Arab clans beginning to populate
the region found that these cats could provide them with meagre
nourishment while traveling between desert oases with their camels.
An unlikely and bedraggled threesome emerged: the vagrant Arab,
their fuel pooping beasts of burden, the camel, and the lately
disenfranchised, ferile furballs that strayed out of northern
Africa. Remarkably, the camels seemed to take pity on these pussies
and began to protect and even coddle them. Apparently the cats were
likewised enamored of the camels as we can note a bit of trivia. If
you watch a video of camels walking, you will see that they move
both of their left feet simultaneously and then their right feet,
in succession. Among animals this is an unusual gait. Yet, it is
likewise that modern house cats walk, unlike their wild and distant
progenitors of Africa. Perhaps this queer anomaly supports the
notion that nurture is sometimes a greater influence on behavior
than nature.