Anony-Mouse wished me to consider the statement,

“Domesticated felines remain in a kitten-esque mode for their adult lives as humans have not allowed (and prefer them) to be dependent on humans for food, affection, and basic health needs.”

This is indeed a complex issue and is mired up to its crux in the inter-species responsibility, slavery, democracy and conflicting paradigms of what constitutes a healthy relationship. Although somewhat peripheral to my speciality of xenobiology, as for any scientist, or indeed living being, each must come to peace with the answer one is satisfied with while reasoning out the matters that won’t fit together within ones own heart.

So far as kittenesque, everyone is, right? We all are bound inside constraints of other’s needs of them, both being looked after by dozens and doing some looking after.

It is true that domesticated felines have had their freedom compromised compared to feral or wild cats such as ocelots by living in closer association with humans. By contact, we are changed. We, being both hairless talls and my species. As I understand it some simians have taken on kittens as surrogate children, taking a cat into species isolation which is a troubling subject. For myself I have always been housed with another of my species, even if sometimes with one disagreeable to me. My freedom to go tomming is curtailed. True, at my age and with my operation, the urge is diminished but I remain a sensual and sexual creature. As with a foreskin or any bodily loss, it is better not to dwell on what might have been.

My desires to prowl and mark a larger territory have shrunk to a smaller scale in the same way any urban dweller’s scale shrinks when coming in from the Australian outback. It is an adjustment but I don’t think a pathologically damaging one. The matter of inter-dependancy is trickier. I have power to change their moods, their sleep, their possessions, to communicate my needs, pleasure and displeasure emphatically.

They could be argued to be the power brokers to a disproportionate degree. Perhaps analogously to how a man rules the woman in the house. The roles are different. The apparent power is different is different but even within that there is a sense of respect and equality, different arenas of strength. One must for one’s own esteem focus on one’s areas of strength not what one doesn’t have.

Mror now and later.