> Oftentimes, I notice how pets (esp. cats[0]) are looked after 24/7 by their owners, groomed, given food, shelter, etc. and pretty much do nothing but continuously solicit pleasure.
Cats continually police the household to detect and eliminate vermin and other such pests, as well as acting as a deterrent to keep the pests and some other animals away. This function used to be more relevant in the past than it is today, however.
That said, I agree that cats are certainly in it to live a comfortable life. There's not really enough cognitive ability for there to be an exchange of comfort and labor, so humans just took advantage of cats' inherent nature. They require a pittance of food for performing a valuable service that humans struggle with doing directly.
These days, many households no longer require the services of a cat. In those households cats provide companionship. It might sound silly to compare the companionship of an animal to that with other humans, but unlike all relationships with humans, animals are nonjudgmental and always present and affectionate regardless of the circumstances. This might be the pets' adaptation to gaming the humans, but the humans nevertheless still find it to be a valuable service. There may be health benefits as well. I don't have any studies to reference, and I haven't researched the topic, but I've heard it mentioned a number of times: http://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/featur...
Describing cats as semi-domesticated seems accurate. They make eye contact and many cats are clearly interested in having a relationship with you individually (not all of them are aloof). They will come to you and meow for help solving problems. They're smart enough to "ask" you to open doors and perform other actions for them. But they don't really have a dog's attentiveness and perceptiveness toward the person, nor the dog's body language and subtlety of interaction. People like cats in part because they are independent and not needy. Owners don't need to worry about a cat going crazy if left alone in a house for a few days. However, I suspect that cats would score somewhere in between dogs and wolves on the tests mentioned in the article.
Our cat has developed extreme levels (for a cat) of communication skills. From the top of my head there's about 20 meow/maw/mraw/meeaw/mwaw/mwo we can distinguish (possibly 50 if I include variations in tones and length of each phoneme). Combined with subtle (compared to dogs) body language, including various tail and body positions and ears + eyes + eyelids + facial hair movements, the overall palette of "words" and "sentences" is much more rich than I could ever have expected.
The counterpart is that he grew to be extremely dependent on us, even more than a typical dog, including attentiveness and perceptiveness.
The thing is, cats can easily be quite independent (autonomous even if you're leaving by the countryside), so if you don't go towards them, they'll never feel the need to develop any more communication skills towards humans. Contrary to dogs though, they need time alone, just like humans do. Yes, "fuck off, I need to be alone" is definitely part of mine's language (way, way before it includes claws)
My cat is quite autonomous (lives outside, relieves himself outside, goes out for errands that can last days, etc.) but at the same time talks to us for many things.
For instance, there is no flap to our front door so if she needs to go outside during the day, she comes to us and meows.
But if it happens during the night she has noticed (I think) that I hate being woken up by hard "meoooo" in the middle of the night; and so she doesn't emit a sound -- she jumps on the bed and does a very soft "dance" on my legs until I (gently) wake up; then she meows and goes to the door, waiting for me to open it.
Cats continually police the household to detect and eliminate vermin and other such pests, as well as acting as a deterrent to keep the pests and some other animals away. This function used to be more relevant in the past than it is today, however.
That said, I agree that cats are certainly in it to live a comfortable life. There's not really enough cognitive ability for there to be an exchange of comfort and labor, so humans just took advantage of cats' inherent nature. They require a pittance of food for performing a valuable service that humans struggle with doing directly.
These days, many households no longer require the services of a cat. In those households cats provide companionship. It might sound silly to compare the companionship of an animal to that with other humans, but unlike all relationships with humans, animals are nonjudgmental and always present and affectionate regardless of the circumstances. This might be the pets' adaptation to gaming the humans, but the humans nevertheless still find it to be a valuable service. There may be health benefits as well. I don't have any studies to reference, and I haven't researched the topic, but I've heard it mentioned a number of times: http://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/featur...
Describing cats as semi-domesticated seems accurate. They make eye contact and many cats are clearly interested in having a relationship with you individually (not all of them are aloof). They will come to you and meow for help solving problems. They're smart enough to "ask" you to open doors and perform other actions for them. But they don't really have a dog's attentiveness and perceptiveness toward the person, nor the dog's body language and subtlety of interaction. People like cats in part because they are independent and not needy. Owners don't need to worry about a cat going crazy if left alone in a house for a few days. However, I suspect that cats would score somewhere in between dogs and wolves on the tests mentioned in the article.