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By Root 543 0

Dogs in the wild catch their prey like good old boys, out-numbering it and running it down in broad daylight, and they can make as much noise as they please in the process. Cats in the wild don’t hunt in packs, though lions may cooperate, and they can’t outrun their prey; they’re fast, but only in the short sprint. They have to surprise their dinner by creeping quietly, waiting patiently, and springing accurately. Sometimes they hunt by night, too, which is manifestly unfair. None of this is very attractive to the human mind. The human mind may even remember Smilodon with his six-inch saber teeth, who could probably sneak as softly as any house cat in spite of being fourteen feet long, and his dinner might have been a friend of ours. When he isn’t hunting, the domestic cat is anything but sneaky, and a pair of them in a hurry down a flight of uncarpeted stairs makes as much noise as a pair of adolescent male humans on the same journey. Hunting, he has to sneak; you don’t catch mice by stamping your feet and shouting about your intentions. And since they say we took him on in the first place to catch mice, it seems ungrateful to complain about his modus operandi.

It’s commonly said that cats are never attached to their people and hang around only because they’re fed. The phrase “cupboard love” was coined for cats. This is odd since cats are notoriously finicky eaters, easily put off their feed by emotional upsets, and often better able than dogs to supplement their diet with a catch. And every cat household has known a cat that blatantly preferred a member of the family who never fed him to the one who did. Pet dogs, presumably, get fed, and goldfish, and gerbils, and no one accuses them of cupboard love. It goes with the legend of the independent cat; if not for food, why would nature’s freest spirit stay at home?

Konrad Lorenz, pioneer animal-watcher, says in King Solomon’s Ring, “All other domestic animals, like some slaves of ancient times, became house servants only after having served a term of true imprisonment, all, that is, with the exception of the cat, for the cat is not really a domesticated animal and his chief charm lies in the fact that, even today, he still walks by himself. Neither the dog nor the cat is a slave, but only the dog is a friend—granted, a submissive and servile ‘friend’ …”

It’s a strange notion he has of friendship, with one party doing all the commanding and the other all the obeying, and we might wonder how he’d feel about his dog if it started ordering him to sit and heel and fetch. It’s a strange notion of slavery too, which remains nonetheless slavery even when the slave enjoys it thoroughly.

“The cat still walks by itself.” Ah, yes, we do cherish the thought. The undomesticated cat, free as the wind, beholden to no one, waving his wet wild tail as he moves on down that lonesome road. The more our own lives are fenced around with obligations and family ties and jobs to show up for, the more we dwell on the dream of the unfettered cat. Cat-haters hate him for it, cat-lovers love him for it. Like the jolly miller on the River Dee, he cares for nobody, no, not he, and nobody cares for him. When things get sticky he can simply leave town like the beloved imaginary cowboy of the Old West, riding away toward the blue hills and leaving only a puff of dust as a forwarding address.

We could pick genuine wild animals to envy, eagles and wolves and mountain goats, but they live remote from our houses, and besides, we sensibly see their lives as pretty arduous. Not free like cat and cowboy but beset by blizzards and hunters and young to rear. We see the cat as needing nothing, in spite of the fact that the actual independent cats we run across are wretchedly thin and miserable, with an estimated maximum life expectancy of two years. That has nothing to do with it; the spirit of the cat, like an invisible flame hovering over its starving body, is independent and rides away into the sunset the way we would ride if we could, singing nonchalantly of the girl we left behind.

It’s curious that throughout