Taking a walk on the wild side

If there’s one thing the internet has done, it’s to prove that cats are the most popular creatures among humans. This is important, because pre-internet it was generally held that dogs were the best, with people saying they were “man’s best friend”. This may still hold true, but the amount of internet traffic devoted to cats shows that if they are not our best friends exactly, they are our best obsession.

The rise of cat celebrities is proof of this. Cats such as Grumpy Cat, Confused Cat and Hitler Cat have all made headlines in the last 10 years. Hong Kong got in on the action with “Tsim Tung Brother Cream”, a convenience store cat in Tsim Sha Tsui who has 110,000 followers and attracted crowds of tearful well-wishers when the store was recently forced to close due to exorbitant rent.

So what is it that endears cats to people so much? It is surely not mutual love. Unlike dogs, cats do not play the game of pleasing their owners – except in as much as pleasing themselves happens to please their human caregivers.

My own theory is that, beyond being generally nice to stroke and calming influences, we secretly thrill to domestic cats as basically being little lions or tigers or leopards. With the domestic cat we can observe the ferocity, the cold ruthlessness of the most feared predators in man’s primal memory, but in a manageable way that entertains but does not directly threaten us.

This is similar to the way ancient Romans reminded themselves of the wild world beyond Roman civilization by representing it in their amphitheaters with gladiatorial combat – often featuring lions and tigers, coincidentally – at the same time as reassuring themselves of their mastery over that world.  

For as all cat owners know, a cat patrols, it prowls and it needs to be king of its territory. Cat owners know that the cat will show its allegiance to its human owner by bringing gifts culled from its wild realm. I have seen even ardent vegetarians play the game of gratitude when their cat brings them such an offering in the form of a dead vole or mouse.

Cats are promoted by pet sellers and even charities as ideal city pets, but there is a worrying aspect to this. If they live in small urban flats such as in Hong Kong they will generally have no access to the outside, since people often do not let their cats out in cities because they are worried they get lost or run over. While a domestic cat will generally sleep up to 18 hours and so is quite happy to lounge about all day, one important part of their life should be nocturnal wandering. The area covered by this varies from cat to cat – some barely cover the garden while others go wandering about the whole neighborhood.

Given that it is presently impossible to afford a cat its nightly walk on the wild side, I do not own one – or vice versa.