The moment when a feral cat trusts you is magical

"I don't think non-cat people understand what it means to gain the trust of a feral cat, it's not easy & when it happens it's so incredibly beautiful" - commenter on the video below which is on TikTok

I have heard this a lot over the years and have experienced it myself when socialising my former feral cat who I adopted as a foster carer. He was about 7 weeks old and terrified of me. He hid for a week under the sideboard! Cooked prawns got him out and he loves them to this day.

@jobiquin #catsoftiktok #CapCut #feralcat #cuteanimals ♬ original sound - Jobi

But the point is that you can tell when a feral cats becomes socialised and can be described as 'domesticated'. The fear drops from their eyes and body language. They actually crave human companionship but are inherently (and rightly) fearful. It can take months to break down that fear. But often it happens much faster.

"Watch the feral cat I took in (with her 4 babies) finally let me love her," says a caption shared along with the viral video.

It is an interesting thought: 'finally let me love her'. It is the moment when a cat does indeed allow themselves be loved by a caring human. The trust. The fear falls away.

Her feral cat finally lets herself be loved by this nice lady, Quin. He partner rescued the cat who'd been around their home for a while with her kittens.

Gentleness in interactions and respect for their feral background is essential, plus excellent food (the video maker uses a very palatable treat paste) and also importantly play.

Playing with a semi-domesticated cat teaches them that you can be trusted. The play toy - usually a feather on a stick - is a kind of 'bridging tool' between you and the cat. 

But as you are welding it, in their mind the cat is playing with a sibling which breaks down barriers very fast. It is how I socialised my cat who by the way retains some of his wild character to this day, 10 years later.

I don't think socialised feral cats ever completely lose their feral character. It lurks deep inside them and sometimes (perhaps) emerges at certain times.

"She had to be brave surviving out there in the wild. She is actually a very sweet cat. You can tell she wants to be loved. She didn't give any fuss when I put her little cat collar on her. I feel like she knew it was hers and it meant she was ours," Quin (the rescuer) said. She lives in Texas, US.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also, sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. And, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable. Finally, (!) I often express an OPINION on the news. Please share yours in a comment.

From 1 to 250 million domestic cats in 10,000 years

At the moment the news media is discussing the domestication of the cat. A good moment to present the story in a different light as indicated in the title. 

At one time - we are unsure exactly when but perhaps around 10,000 years ago - there was one domestic cat. The first domestic cat in the world. Well, they weren't exactly domesticated, more tamed North African wildcat but for sake of keeping things simple we'll call that first, precious cat 'domesticated'.

Image: MikeB

Of course, the person with whom the cat resided had no idea that they were making history! But they were. It was entirely novel at the time. But also, at that time the dog had been domesticated for about 10,000 years already!

Anyway, 10,000 years later humankind has around 250 million domestic cats living on the planet it is believed. The number is a guess so please don't quote the figure as a fact as it is not.

The trouble with the internet is that what starts out as an estimate or even a guess becomes fact after it has been recycled hundreds of times online through various website but mainly news media websites.

To the approximate quarter of a billion domestic cats, we can add a similar number of feral and stray cats making a grand total of around half a billion (500,000,000).

For me, the equal number of feral cats strongly indicates that cat domestication has been an unmitigated failure despite the fact that their presence in millions of homes has brightened up the lives of their human caregivers. But there should be no feral cats.

Each feral cat is a failure in cat domestication. A failure in cat ownership and caregiving. In the early days of cat domestication by the Ancient Romans I suspect that there were very few feral cats.

Domestic cats were perhaps more important and relatively rare. As they become ever more commonplace their value decreased leading to poor cat caregiving, carelessness leading to domestic cats becoming unwanted strays and ferals.

This carelessness in cat ownership would have led and still does to allowing them to procreate. Back in the day there was no such thing as spaying and neutering or veterinarians.

Now we have vets and still careless people allow their cats to procreate to swell the number of feral cats further.

The worst case of humankind's relationship with the cat is in Australia where there is legalised cat cruelty on a large scale as the authorities poison, shoot and kill in any way possible the feral cats on that continent with no thought to dealing with the 'problem' humanely.

Australia is the ultimate example of failure in cat domestication as it is full of cruelty.

What would you do if your mostly indoor cat goes outside and doesn't want to come home?

Sometimes you might do all you can to keep your cat safe and secure. You make them a full-time indoor cat and you look after them well. Or they might be a mainly indoor cat and sometimes they go outside and return willingly.

If your cat was raised as a stray or feral cat, they might want to revert to the outdoors lifestyle because it is a lifestyle that they know. It's those early weeks - the first seven weeks of life - which are so important for a cat. What they learn during that sensitive time they carry with them all their lives.

It is actually a bigger issue than that as all domestic cats are barely domesticated it is said. Arguably their natural instinct is to live outside the artificial environment of the human home.

Cat prefers to live outside the human home. Image: in public domain.

If you have domesticated a feral cat or adopted a rescue cat that was a stray or feral cat, they might want to revert to the wild so to speak.

They simply might prefer to live outside the human environment which means the human home. And in my opinion, there is not much you can do about it. You may see them, talk to them and try and entice them back but they decide to stay in the 'wild'. 

You can try and keep them inside full-time and more importantly transform the inside of your home to where it becomes very cat friendly with a catio or two and some window boxes to sit in to watch the outside (cat TV). There would be a couple of climbing trees up to the ceiling and so on and so forth.

But this would be something that a typical homeowner does not want because they want their home to accommodate humans and being entirely suitable for humans. A compromise is the way forward.

However, if a cat with an urge to live outside wants to vacate a home which has been reasonably modified to accommodate cat behaviour, they'll do it no matter. 

The rather negative point that I'm making is that on some occasions domestic cats simply want to live outside and are prepared to put up with the hardship. If that is the case, there is not much you can do about it.

You may have to kiss your cat goodbye because ultimately people don't own cats. They possess them if you want to put it that way. They probably don't even possess them. They live with domestic cats and care for them but they have their own mind and you have to let them express their own behaviours in the hope and expectation that your efforts will be sufficient to keep them with you as a companion.

There is the faint possibility that another cat - provided that cat really gets along with the resident cat - might help to keep the cat at home; to 'anchor' them. That's a chancy way to proceed because often resident cats don't get along well with incoming cats. 

And a former stray cat is likely to be more territorial than is typically encountered. That might make them more difficult when asking them to get along with a new cat.

Realism! Infographic on 5 barriers to a successful relationship with your domestic cat

This is a brief cross post to a similar article that I have just written on the main website. The reason? I think it's an important topic. Although I don't want to talk down the relationship between domestic cats and humans. This is a wonderful success story which is why there are about 90 million domestic cats in America and about 11 million in the UK and so on. There are perhaps around 250 million domestic cats in the world but as a sign of failure there are a similar number of unowned cats as well. Not great. A pessimist might argue that the domestication of the cat is a failure as a whole.

Realism! Infographic on 5 barriers to a successful relationship with your domestic cat. By MikeB

There are some barriers if we are to be realistic to the relationship. And I am a great realist. I believe in realism because in this way we can overcome those barriers. If we recognise them, we can then develop strategies to deal with them. Normally, we do this automatically. 

Claws

We learn to avoid being scratched by our cat. Well, at least most of us do. Sadly, some don't. The terrified weaklings and nervous types who declaw their cats are cruel quite frankly. It is a barbaric operation. And the word "barbaric" is not one of my making. The world's top veterinarian and author Dr. Bruce Fogle DVM has used it in his book Complete Cat Care.

Declawing is a cop-out. It is a cheap fix for the owner and a dire mutilation for the cat.

I won't go on about declawing but it is a horror story and it should never happen. It does happen because, as mentioned, the domestic cat's claws are a barrier to the success of a good relationship between human cat and vets can't pass up on the opportunity to make a few bucks. And there are four others.

Teeth

How many people have been bitten by their cat because of redirected aggression or because they played too hard with their cat? How many times have domestic cats been abandoned to rescue centres because a child was bitten by the family cat because of manhandling?

If a domestic cat did not have those gorgeous canine teeth but little incisor teeth throughout their mouth, there would be no penetrating cat bites injecting bacteria under the skin of the human. And there would be much fewer abandonment of cats to shelters for this reason.

"Bad cat behaviour" is a reason why people abandon their cats. One form of bad cat behaviour is to be bitten and scratched by a cat. Of course, the reason is invariably due to human behaviour because they lacked the foresight and wherewithal to avoid those injuries. It is natural behaviour that humans naturally dislike.

It is down to the human to use their intelligence to learn how cats behave and when they are susceptible to biting and scratching and to avoid those moments.

Circadian rhythms

The disparity in circadian rhythms between domestic cats and people is highly noticeable but I think people don't sometimes recognise it. In stark terms, domestic cats like to be active at night, particularly dawn and dusk, while humans have the deeply entrenched habit of going to sleep at night when it's dark, waking up in the morning and being active throughout daytime.

Domestic cats don't understand this. They see their human companion as a surrogate mother and therefore a feline. Why is their mother sleeping all night? They desperately want to wake them up. That is why they come onto the bed at four in the morning and start poking and prodding their owner's face or nose to wake them up. Or they do something else. Domestic cats are very creative in waking up their human caregiver's in the early hours of the morning. This then is a barrier to a successful relationship with your domestic cat.

There are perhaps millions of words spoken about keeping cats out of the bedroom at night or preventing them from waking up their caregiver at four in the morning. This is down to a disparity in circadian rhythms.

It is also down to the fact that the human bedroom smells very much of the human and domestic cats love it. They want to be there, at the center of their home range. To prevent them coming into the bedroom at night I think is unfair even cruel. Jackson Galaxy, the American behaviourist would agree with me.

Environment

This leads me nicely to the environment. There is a gradual, year-on-year increase in the number of full-time indoor cats in the West, particularly the UK and the USA. This is to protect wildlife and domestic cats. It gives the owner peace of mind. It is doing the right thing on conservation and in providing security to their cat companion.

These are all great reasons but the counterpart is a great failing in not providing a substitute environment within the home which goes some way to making up for the loss of the outdoor environment where a domestic cat can hunt to their hearts content. Hunting is the raison d'être of a domestic cat. It is the way their mind is stimulated and the way they find happiness.

To simply shut all the doors and windows and keep them captive inside the home without anything else is also in my opinion at least slightly cruel. Dopamine is released into the cat's brain when he hunts thus creating a feeling of eager anticipation which makes it less likely for him to feel bored, anxious, or depressed.

It is beholden upon cat caregiver to at least provide a catio environment where they can sniff the air and feel some earth beneath their feet. 

Where they can hear the birds and the animals. They might become frustrated but at least they can see and hear. Also, in a good catio they can climb to the ceiling to exercise their desire to move vertically. Catio cats are content cats and their personalities improve.

In the very best homes where the owner has converted it to suit their cat, the interiors are awesome. Very, very few people do this but when they do it is done beautifully.

Predator

The domestic cat, as you know, as a top-quality predator. Within their weight class they are the top predator on land I would argue. They have inherited all the weapons they need to be successful. I've mentioned them. But this is a barrier to a successful domestic cat to human relationship. A lot of people don't want their cat to kill animals. And they don't like it when they bring half dead animals into the home where they kill them and then eat them on the kitchen floor. Millions of cat owners have spent millions of hours trying to save mice from their cat to release them to the exterior. This is a barrier to a successful relationship.

My cat is a wonderful hunter. He often brings mice into the home during the warmer months, kills them and then eats them under my bed. I wake up to the sound of a once living sending creature being eaten. I also can hear the mouse crying in defence before the killing bite. Not something I like at all. I put up with it but it is a detriment to our relationship.

Let's accept the barriers and find ways around them. That's what most but not all cat owners do, which is why I have written this article and created this infographic.

Early "domestic cats" were actually tamed wildcats

It is said, with confidence nowadays, that the first domestic cats on the planet existed about 9500 years ago. It all started in an area that we know now as Syria and spread out from there. The skeleton of a wildcat and a man were unearthed on the island of Cyprus. The remains were dated at 9500 years ago.

It is entirely plausible that cats were domesticated before that date perhaps as long ago was 14,000 years in the past. The wild cat on Cyprus had been imported onto that island from Syria by its owner.

This man had a pet cat. But his pet cat was a tame North African wildcat. It's a bit like today when people sometimes like to live with a tame serval. These are not truly domesticated cats. They are simply conditioned to behave in a fairly calm way around people. They are conditioned to live with people in the human environment. But they don't cope very well and they are quite challenging.

This very early 'domestic cat' was in fact a tamed wildcat from north Africa. Picture in the public domain.

I say that because this man living on Cyprus 9500 years ago would have had the same sort of issues with his pet cat. Although, admittedly, the North African wildcat is naturally predisposed towards a pliable character which gets along well with people. In fact, in Africa today there are African wildcats approaching human settlements and becoming somewhat like domestic cats.

But it is quite important to state that the first so-called 'domestic cats' were actually tamed wildcats. The difference is that with a tamed cat you have trained an individual cat to live with a person or persons but they are still in essence a wild cat and therefore their character is going to be somewhat difficult to accept. There might be the occasional aggression from the cat because they are inherently twitchy especially when living in this false environment of the human world.

RELATED: Why did ancient Egyptians shave off their eyebrows to mourn their dead cats?

In contrast, the true domestic cat has developed over thousands of years. They have a lineage. They've either selectively bred themselves or humans have selectively bred them to have a character which is inherently domesticated or predisposed to domestication. In short, domestication is an alteration to the genetic make-up of an animal as opposed to an alteration of their behaviour. The former changes go far deeper than the latter.

An important further note to make is that domestic cats still require socialisation as kittens. If not they are fearful of humans.

It is somewhat ironic that on Cyprus today there are more cats than people. These are going to be community cats largely but there will be domestic and feral cats as well. This problem has occurred because of a lax approach to spaying and neutering of cats so they have been allowed to breed when living in the urban environment. And of course the government has not grasped the problem sufficiently well to resolve it.

RELATED: Why are there so many cats on Cyprus?

It is probably fair to state that Cyprus is a snapshot of what is wrong with the relationship between humans and cats. In the early days cat domestication it worked to a large extent. The first true domestic cats were in ancient Egypt about 4,000 years ago. They were all mackerel/spotted tabbies and slightly larger than today's domestic cat. Although the ancient Egyptians abused domestic cats by breeding them for sacrifice to the gods. That is a clear abuse by modern standards although it is tricky to judge a race of people by modern standards.

But the fact is that the concept of cat domestication is a good one but humans have screwed up and arguably it is been a failure of a process. This is because there are hundreds of millions of feral cats on the planet. They are homeless, they are often miserable, distressed and ill. Their lifespan is shortened. They should be living with people. This must be judged as a failure of humankind in the domestication of the cat.

Domestic cats have more control over their lives than dogs

This is a little note about cat domestication. For an animal to be fully domesticated humankind must have complete control over their lives. Humans need to control what the animal eats and where they go. And, importantly, how they breed. Purebred cats aside, as most domestic cats have a lot of control over their lives they can't be considered as completely domesticated.

Domestic cat wandering outside. Photo in public domain.

Arguably the trend in keeping cats inside all the time is one more step in total domestication. It is probably a major step as it means complete control over what they eat. Outside cats hunt and choice prey to supplement their commercially prepared diet.

It is not just about human control over cats. The mentality of domestic cats is closer to their wild ancestor than for dogs. They've retained the wild cat mentality. A cat can go from eating a freshly killed mouse one minute to eating kibble the next and enjoy them equally.

The life of a purebred cat is very much more under the control of humans. They are more likely to be kept inside the home all their lives and their existence is down to selective breeding by a breeder. The breeder chooses if they exist. Their appearance is controlled by the breeder and to a certain extent their character. The purebred cat is more domesticated.

Domestic cats don't exist. Discuss.

Jackson Galaxy doesn't believe that domestic cats truly exist and he's right. He says that the word "domestic" when applied to cats "has always struck me as fundamentally well, just wrong". Of course, there are domestic cats and they are described as domestic cats. 

Comparing African wildcat and domestic tabby cat appearance. They are similar. The domestic cat tends to be fatter! Their coat is higher contrast but their character is very similar. Image: MikeB

However, in Jackson Galaxy's words the "raw cat" is so near the surface that it is very difficult to describe our cat companions as domesticated. They are just about there to the point where they have the ability to adapt to the human environment but they slip into that raw cat mentality very quickly and it emerges all the time in every aspect of their lives. In truth, it is a characteristic which can come into conflict with human expectations.

Sometimes people look at their cat companion as a member of the family, and as a child or little human which is nice and cute, but what they're looking at is a top-line predator in the taxonomical group of mammals called Carnivora. It is always useful to remind ourselves that the domestic cat is a wildcat within.

When a cat behaviourist such as Jackson Galaxy tries to work out what is behind "bad cat behaviour" as described by a cat owner who seeks his assistance, he will look at two things (1) what the humans are doing and how they interact with their cat and the environment they create for their cat plus (2) cross-check that information with the demands of the wildcat within the domestic cat.

Associated page: Are tigers related to domestic cats?

Cat behaviour is really about human behaviour because humans dictate the environment in which the "raw cat" lives. In Jackson Galaxy's words "everything about our cats, from their territorial identification and nutritional requirements to the ways they play and behave, are linked back to their raw twin". 

The "raw twin" that he is referring to is the North African wildcat a.k.a. the Near Eastern wildcat which was to a certain extent domesticated about 10,000 years ago and which still lives in the same areas that it did when domesticated. They are still there and I guess some of them are still being domesticated as they are attracted to human settlements.

So, when you want to try and figure out something about your cat remember their raw roots and tune into their rawness "because that is where their mojo lives". Those quoted words are also by Jackson Galaxy. What he means by that is if you want to make your cat content you have to tap in to the raw cat within and find out how to push those buttons and then provide an environment and interactions which achieves that. When you do this, you will make him happy because he will be able to express his natural desires.

Study on pet wolf behaviour helps explain why wild cats don't make great pets

It is my contention that true wild cats like the serval don't make good pets because they are not backed up by 10,000 years of domestication. I believe that memory can be inherited. It is called genetic memory. This is why young offspring of wild animals such as wild cats or wild dogs immediately know how to do things completely instinctively. And it's why domestic cats have the memory of human behavior in their DNA.

Zena, a pet serval, and James Brown's partner? Photo: James Brown.

And I believe that domestic cats over thousands of years of domestication learn how to interact with people and that this memory is held in their genes to be passed on to their offspring. And the study on young wolves regarded as pets to their owners found that they could never quite pick up inferences from human behaviour as could domestic dogs. Therefore, they were unable to communicate with people in quite the same way.

Dogs are born with an innate ability to understand what humans want to communicate to them. Their ability is to read people because of perhaps 20,000 years of domestication. Dogs have been domesticated for far longer than cats because they were and still are working animals.

Because they understand people better, they form much better bonds with people than do pet wild dogs i.e. wolves. Across a range of tests in the study the dog puppies greatly outperformed their wolf cousins. For example, despite puppies, only a few weeks old, know where to find their food because the human is pointing at it whereas not one of the young wolves in the study did any better than chance. In other words, there was no background, inherited skills.

The pet wolf is a raw product without a history of interacting with human beings. Take that from the study and you get the same effect in living with exotic cats as they are called, which refers normally to the small and medium-sized wild cat species such as the serval, as mentioned, and sometimes the cheetah or even the mountain lion. I have seen people regard mountain lions as pets. They even go a step further and have lions and tigers as pets sometimes but the relationship between cat and person will never be the same as with a domestic cat.

Wild cats as pets are not able to create the same bond and understanding between themselves and their human carer as the humble domestic cat. That is not to say that bonds are formed. Some people say that exotic cats such as the F1 Savannah create strong bonds but that cat is half domestic cat.

P.S. The study referred to was carried out at the Wildlife Science Center in Stacy, Minnesota and published in the journal Current Biology.

Pet puma kept in a one-roomed apartment in Moscow

MOSCOW, RUSSIA-NEWS AND VIEWS: It is reported by RT.com that the owner of a one-room apartment bought a mountain lion because he was getting bored. He lives in the south-west of Moscow. He calls the cat Hercules. We are told that the two have bonded. He likes the attention that he attracts to himself when he takes his mountain lion for a walk. 

Pet puma kept in a one-roomed apartment in Moscow

He has become a local celebrity in the area. Some passers-by admire it and are in awe of a puma on a lead but not everyone is happy including a pop singer and reality television show contestant Vika Daineko who is shocked. 

The man walks his large, domesticated wild cat across the way from her apartment. She wants the man and his cat banned from the area and is in the process of collecting signatures on a petition to achieve that goal. She is also going to take legal action it is reported. She is scared for the area's children.

The Russians like their cats. There are some amazing cat breeders in Russia. They do take cat breeding to a fine art with certain breeds such as the Maine Coon and the hairless cats.

Note: videos on this site are typically made by people other than me and held on YouTube servers or the servers of other businesses (not the server storing this website). Sometimes the videos are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened I apologise but I have no control over it.

You do not have to be an animal advocate to see the unsuitability of this arrangement. Some people might say that if the puma was about to be euthanized then the man is doing a favour and improving cat welfare but that is unlikely to be the reason why he ended up with this mountain lion. He says he was bored so be adopted one to alleviate the boredom; but the problem is wider than that.

It is also about the local authorities and a lack of oversight. The authorities should have prevented this happening. It would appear that you don't need a licence to adopt a large wild cat in Russua; an exotic animal and one unsuited to flat dwelling.

In the UK you would have to apply for a licence and demonstrate that you have the ability to look after a mountain lion and that you have the right facilities. There would be inspections of paperwork and facilities if they granted a licence. In this instance, if this man had applied for a licence in the UK it would have been rejected, quite obviously. Therefore, I'm back to my original point which is that the authorities are ultimately to blame for a lax attitude leading to this unsatisfactory arrangement.

I don't like to see it happening. How did this mountain lion get into Russia in the first place? Who imported the animal? It must have been imported because there are no mountain lions in Russia. It must come from America. Perhaps it belonged to a zoo or there is somebody in America exporting mountain lions to Russia. If that is happening then there is a lax attitude in America towards the exportation of wild cat species such as this puma. A lot of this is to do with the law, the enforcement of the law or the lack of both. Those are the root causes of this problem.

First domestic cats in Europe

A study published on July 28th 2020: Ancestors of domestic cats in Neolithic Central Europe: Isotopic evidence of a synanthropic diet, states that 'the early migration of the Near Eastern cat...preceded the known establishment of housecat populations in the region by around 3,000 BCE (Before Common Era). The Common Era means AD (Anno Domini). So 3,000 BCE means 3,000 BC (Before Christ).

African wild somewhat like the first domestic cats of Europe. Photo: Pixabay.

To recap, they believe that the Near Eastern wildcat migrated to Poland around 4,200 years before Christ (BC) and after around 1,200 years the first Near Eastern wildcats in Poland were domesticated or semi-domesticated.

The first domestic cats worldwide are estimated to be dated at 9,500 BC on Cyprus. It is believed that this cat was similarly a domesticated Near Eastern wildcat that was imported into Cyprus by ship with its owner.

One theory is that the wildcat followed the migration of farmers into Poland as 'synanthropes'. Synanthropes are animals or plants which live near humans because it benefits them.

Back in those first years of domestication of the wild cat it was a successful process as both species benefited (not so successful today). There were no feral cats. All domestic cats were first generation domesticated wild cats at the very beginning. Then subsequent wildcat offspring were domesticated and true domestication began. 

At present there are an estimated 500 million domestic and feral cats in the world. At around 3,000 BC the number of domestic cats was probably in the tens of thousands worldwide if that.

Did cats domesticate themselves?

It claimed that 'cats domesticated themselves'. But what does it mean? Firstly the statement should be amended to read, 'wildcats domesticated themselves'. That makes more sense and is more precise.

The cat domesticated itself? This is a European wildcat. The African-Asia version
of this wild cat species allowed themselves to be domesticated around 10,000
years ago but they did not 'domesticate themselves' in my opinion. Photo: Creative Commons
license on Flickr.

Specifically the African-Asian wildcat domesticated itself. But I am unsure if this is correct. The process of domestication takes two parties: the animal and the human. They play at least an equal role and perhaps in this instance the human played the major role.

What it means is that wild cats liked to be around farmers' grain stores about 10,000 years ago because there were hordes mice and other rodents there providing a supply of food. It was very attractive to a wild cat and it still is.

You'll still see wild cats near human settlements in Africa which is why they become hybrids having matted with domestic or semi-domestic cats.

Anyway because the cats willingly came to the farmers and hung around allowing the humans to get to know them it is said that the cats domesticated themselves. 

The better description would be that they allowed themselves to be domesticated as a consequence of being in contact with people. And of course the people desired that wild cat domestication. A two-way process.

The leader in the process must be the human. It is still the same now in the human-domestic cat relationship. The human leads and largely dictates the terms of the friendship.

Although there is a large amount of training that goes on by the domestic cat of the human. It is a gradual, informal version of training but equally effective but it once again relies on the agreement and cooperation of the owner.