The Cat should not be Domesticated

Some say that the cat should not be domesticated. This is a shocking thought to people who keep cats and who derive a lot of pleasure from it. And cats get a lot of benefit from the arrangement too. Yet when I think about it there is some merit in the argument. It is organizations like PETA who believe that the domestication of the cat should be halted and reversed (on my understanding of their declared objectives).

Once upon a time some 9 thousand years ago at the very moment that the first wild cat became domesticated there were no feral cats in the world. Just wild cats and one domesticated cat. Then over the intervening thousands of years there were more domestic cats until there was an estimated 500 million in the world. And like all possessions that people own there will be some "rubbish". A cruel word to me but for many millions of cat "owners" abandoned cats are in effect rubbish to them, carelessly thrown out on occasions. Unfortunately in this instance the rubbish is a living creature and they struggle to live in a human suburban world when once they would have been comfortable living in the wild. A large majority of abandoned cats that turn to feral cats are eventually treated like rubbish and euthanized. Also unfortunately this form of rubbish reproduces itself (cats are good at that) so unhappy feral cats begat more unhappy feral cats. One act of human carelessness grows to a mountain of pain.

We really do have a tendency to buy, possess and discard and it even happens in space. There are tons and tons of unused satellites and bits of satellites in space circulating the globe waiting to be pulled into the earth by the gravitational force. It is the same principle. We just produce a lot of waste including living waste. And it is totally unnacceptable to do this in relation to living creatures. It is this huge negative that counterbalances the massive positive that the domestication of the cat can bring. And the cat is considered to be self-dometicated. The cat wanted it. But little did she or he realize that one day that simple and beneficial process might work against the general population of cats.

So, if we could eliminate the feral cat problem and population without cruelty to the feral cat, then, and only then, could we once again justify the domestication of the cat,with complete confidence, because it could be argued that it only brought benefits. The argument that the cat should not be domesticated can now be and is being made successfully by animal rights people (and I am an animal rights person). People in the commercial market place dealing with cats owe an obligation to tackle the feral cat problem and not to ignore which seems to be the case. It undermines their efforts.

The Cat should not be Domesticated to Cat Breeders and Animal Rights