Consider the raptures of Christopher Smart in his English insane asylum in the 1700s—so like the raptures of Japanese Emperor Uda almost a millennium before on the other side of the world in his diary after being gifted one of Japan’s first cats. And then, the responses of Australian and Polynesian islanders seeing a cat for the first time—from Tucker2016, The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World:

Perhaps the most arresting ships’ logs describe the cats’ reception on inhabited islands. Here, native people who had never seen a cat of any sort, nor guessed such creatures existed, encounter them for the first time. Nowhere is their species’ power over ours more apparent. “Our cats…struck them with particular astonishment”…after several Aborigines came aboard the HMS Mermaid, docked off Queensland in 1823_202ya. “They were…continually caressing the cats, and holding them up for the admiration of their companions on shore.” Among the Samoans, “a passion arose for cats”, noted Titian Peale…“and they were obtained by all possible means from the whale ships visiting the islands.” On Ha’apai, natives stole 2 of Captain Cook’s “Catts”. On Eromanga, natives exchanged cords of fragrant Polynesian sandalwood for the explorers’ felines.

And who can get enough of cat videos, which:

…present minimalist narratives, focused on an instant of spectacle. A typical cat video establishes a state of calm, then suddenly disrupts it. The cat is usually the active agent of change, though chance also frequently plays an important role. The pervasiveness of this structure means that viewers familiar with the form may even anticipate a serendipitous event. The disruption prompts a surprising or comic effect for the viewer, and this is a key part of the video’s pleasure.

For example, in “Cat vs Printer”, the establishing scenario is the cat intently watching the printer, a presumably quotidian scene, which escalates when the cat begins to smack the moving paper. The narrative climaxes in the final two seconds of the video, when the cat strikes the paper so hard that the printer tray bounces, and the surprised cat falls off its stool. The video ends abruptly. This disruption also takes the viewer by surprise (at least it does the first time you watch it). The terse ending, and lack of resolution or denouement, encourages the viewer to replay the video. The minimal narrative effectively builds expectation for a moment of surprise…The most popular cat videos seem to have the most sudden and striking disruptions as well as the most abrupt endings. They seem the most dramatic and spontaneous.

…The conventional formal structure of these videos effectively homogenizes the cat, as if there is a single cat performing in millions of videos. Indeed, YouTube comments often suggest a likeness between the cat represented in the video and the commenter’s own cat. In this sense, the cuteness so readily identified has a homogenizing effect. It also has the effect of distinguishing cats as a species from other animals, as it confounds common conceptions of all (other) animals as fundamentally alike in their essential difference from the human (animal). Cat videos are often appreciated for what they reveal about cats in general, rather than for each cat’s individuality. In this way, cat videos symbolize a generic feline cuteness, rather than identify a particular cat as cute.

This is also true of big cats: “cats are cats everywhere” (a hint at how undomesticated house-cats are—channeled well in the disturbing Garfield comic, “Primal Self”), and we are struck by how a lion or tiger in their pen resembles a very large, bored house-cat. People line up to see them in zoos or even play with them at big cat preserves.

This fascination with cats is, I think, part of why people find the Toxoplasma gondii theory of cat attraction so plausible. It just feels like there is something there to explain, some sort of cat mind control power not granted to other animals like dogs or squirrels. And then, the idea that people are being accidentally mind-controlled by a mouse parasite which makes them (the mice, not the humans) sexually attracted to cats is too perfect to doubt.

This seems less common with dogs (although of course it does happen, and has happened to me several times dog-walking).

The paradox here is that on most metrics, dogs are much more popular than cats: there are more of them, we spend more on them, we clone them much more (despite cat cloning coming first—2001 vs 2005), dog charities are better funded, more research happens on dogs, dogs/wolves appear in an incredible amount of written text, historical & contemporary—which may come as a surprise to people who spend a lot of time online, but seems to be true. In every way aside from in-person observation (eg. zoo, preserve, or cat cafe), canids are more popular than felids, not less. For example, in the hugely popular ‘supernatural romance’ mega-genre, there are wolf-oriented niches like the “Omegaverse”, but any feline-oriented ones are much less popular. Similarly in the furry subculture, felines may seem to be the stereotypical example, but canines, foxes, and others are also common and seem more popular.

And the portrayals of cats and dogs could hardly be more different in terms of moral valence: cats are often negatively or ambiguously portrayed, agents of chaos and selfishness (where not outright antagonists).

Not to belabor the point, but while cats may have 9 lives, it is all the dogs who go to heaven, or who loyally guard Hades; and Odysseus was not recognized by his old cat—there is no Dog in the Hat, it is not “Le Chien”; it is not a ‘Wolf Who Came to Tea’; the infant Mowgli is raised by canids, not Shere Khan (who wanted to eat him); The Aristocats is a somewhat unflattering portrayal of cats compared to dogs in The Lady and the Tramp (who are persecuted by sinister Siamese cats). Cats are even held to risk eating your corpse if you become a ‘cat lady’ (who might be a witch or heretic with her familiars)—although in real life, I see more ‘dog dames’ with their ‘fur babies’, and there are actually more dog-corpse cases than cats. And we would not need to defend cats by saying “the cat did nothing wrong!”

What is going on here? Do we really like cats because they have ‘baby faces’ or because they are ‘neotenous’ or kittens sound a little like human babies?

These are common theories, but make little sense to me. The relationship between baby-faces and animal liking is weak to begin with (eg. Archer & Monton2010). Cats objectively do not look that much like babies. Nor are they being selected by humans to look like babies (whereas dogs clearly have undergone domestication syndrome long ago); only a few recent cat breeds are starting to look baby-like (eg. Persian and Ragdoll) and those still represent a small minority of pet cats (and many people regard them as rather weird-looking and offputting). We are fascinated by adult cats as much as kittens (perhaps even more so); we are attracted to cats even when we cannot see their faces; cat media like videos do not particularly emphasize faces (eg. the “Cat vs Printer” cat’s face is often obscured); anecdotes from before the neoteny theory became popular, like Emperor Uda, never make a comparison with babies; and it can’t explain cat near-parity with dogs, which are so vastly superior at having human-like faces, facial expressions, neoteny, begging, whining, etc.

And how do we reconcile these theories with the constant undercurrent of subversion, danger, and wildness that is part of the peculiar appeal of cats?

But while reading about felid predation rates on primates in Africa & India, I learned something interesting: I knew, of course, that big cats prey on monkeys of every sort, but I learned that it wasn’t an occasional thing or one of many predators—but that a lot of our ancestors were killed by cats.

And I mean a lot.

Hart2000 surveyed field researchers & compiled reports on predators of primates and the by-species composition of the diet of African big cats, raptors, hyenas, crocodiles, etc, and it turns out that primates like chimpanzees or baboons are a major source of food for lions & leopards. A leopard might easily have a diet of 10–25% monkeys, and the total mortality on a colony can be extraordinarily high: “Based on nocturnal observations, an estimated >8% of the baboon population at Moremi, Botswana was killed annually due to predation by lions and leopards (Busse1980).” They are silently picked off one by one, far from watching eyes, where no one can hear them vanish: “Even though an estimated 45% of the vervet population fell victim to leopards during one year at Amboseli, no vervets were killed within sight of researchers (Isbell1990b, Isbell1994b)”. (Hart notes that while primatologists often never saw one of their subjects killed, those studying the leopards or lions knew better: “Only 19 primatologists out of 227 questionnaire respondents had knowledge of more than 2 predations on their study populations. Contrast this with the responses from predator researchers; known or observed kills by the predator they were studying averaged 20 primates, and one researcher had gathered information on 350 primate kills by leopards”!)

It follows. The threat of felid predation was severe in part because unlike canid predators like hyenas (who often dined on primates), they could follow the primates up into their homes in trees. This makes big cats a uniquely horrifying predator for primates: trees are refuges, which protect against raptors/eagles, canids, crocodiles… but not snakes or leopards. Baboons sleeping in trees carefully position the young as high up as possible on the thinnest branches while the adults guard the bottom. No wonder vervet monkeys evolved distinct alarm calls for leopards, eagles, and snakes. (The leopards will still pick some off in the night.) Sleep soundly… if you dare.

And while it’s hard to tell and no primate, not even gorillas, are immune, it seems like the smaller the primate, the more vulnerable they are to cats (and snakes).

Primate predators. Thus, Hart argues for thinking of big cats, and leopards in particular, as “specialist predators”: they specialize in eating us primates. And they have been hunting us, to some degree, for possibly tens of millions of years. True, humans long ago grew up into challenging prey for big cats, and we have since colonized the world. And true, in many places, humans are far more afraid of animals like wolves or bears or feral dog packs, and it is easier to be traumatized by a dog as a child and develop cynophobia… but lots of humans have been killed by big cats up until quite recently, attacks still happen in places like India, and that was a long time to be terrified, every night, of cats, and to learn to recognize them in our very genes. (And perhaps also fear of snakes.)

Cats behave remarkably like one of our major historical predators. And since ‘cats are cats everywhere’, that means when we see leopards as large house-cats, that is another way of saying that we see house-cats as small leopards—-the terror of our ancestors for mega-years.

This is unusual: no popular pet like a ferret or a bunny has ever been a major predator of primates. Canids have been—but note that we do fear wolves greatly in the wild; while dogs have been highly genetically altered by domestication to make them into servants, and honorary humans, who are bred for submission & loyalty, and slot conveniently into the human ‘pack’. Say what you will about canid attacks, but they at least bite you to your face, as it were; they don’t climb in your bedroom window to murder you in your sleep (nor claw through the walls of your house, like the Leopard of Rudraprayag).

But there is one explanation which sums this all up neatly: Why do children fear lions & tigers (and snakes) above everything else? Why do many prey animals engage in “predator inspection”, where they closely approach and follow predators (eg. Thomson’s gazelles following cheetahs & lions)? Why do we watch horror movies or play survival horror games or go on roller coasters or talk to Bing Sydney? Why does perfume so often include, as a trace but key component, musk and other ingredients that on their own would be revolting? Why is true-crime media so popular, and why do women read or listen to so many books & podcasts about serial killers & rapists? Why are we so morbidly curious and linger over danger?

Because it is rewarding to safely experience dangerous situations, paradoxical as it may seem: learning is rewarding.

Cats are compelling to watch in the way that a villain is compelling to watch. Villains act; heroes react. And doesn’t building a relationship with a villain feel so much more earned than with a hero? (Which would you remember more, earning a compliment from Superman—or Lex Luthor?)

Cats are like the serial killer in a horror movie; we are fascinated and alerted whenever they are nearby, and we can’t help but watch them, even when they do nothing and present no immediate threat. This is true even when the horror movie is ostensibly about reptiles: you can take Jurassic Park, and slot in a cat for the T-Rex or the velociraptors, and the scenes work purrfectly.

You wouldn’t turn your back on Hannibal Lecter, any more than a herd of gazelle would turn their backs on a lion snoozing in the grass. You have to watch them. They’re so intrinsically interesting, because they are dangerous. You can watch them endlessly for the slightest hint which might save your life; after all, how often does a gazelle get to watch a lion or leopard up close, clearly, and risk-free? Not often!

It doesn’t matter that your pet cat is (relatively) little threat to you: “a cat is a cat everywhere”, and somewhere in your monkey-brain, your pet cat looks just like a big cat to you.

We watch them roughhouse and play and learn to hunt, and (unlike puppies playing) we know that what they play as kittens on us, they would practice as adults on us as well; we watch them knock things off the table, and perhaps, on some level, we imagine a big cat prodding us to see if we’re alive and good to eat, or better left to the scavengers; we watch them watch us, and we note uneasily how that is the same stare they fix on the birds outside the window; they flex their hidden claws, and remind us of what those would do if they were 6-inches long and razor-sharp—and the hiss or yowl pierce the ear, where a dog bark is merely annoying yapping.

Cat videos exemplify this: a calm scene suddenly disrupted by an active agent (the Cat)—essentially a bite-sized predator scenario.

It’s a ‘homogenized’ Cat archetype we’re watching, not a unique individual, which is exactly the appeal. (Why do cat owners take a perverse pride in noting the similarity of their cats to the cat in a video or to a big cat, instead of trying to emphasize their uniqueness?)

And we can justify watching cat videos as relaxing or not feeling like shameless procrastination—if it’s a bite-sized bit of “predator inspection”, like gazelle taking a quick time-out to inspect the stalking leopard. Nothing against squirrels, who can be most amusing, but deep down, my brain is not taking notes on this rare opportunity to witness a felid attack on fellow prey, and just doesn’t care as much.

This is a mechanism which doesn’t translate to fictional media. Writing about a cat doesn’t do it; painting a cat doesn’t do it. Only real cats work. (In the same way that a drawing of a snake doesn’t trigger our terror of a snake the way a high-quality video or a real snake does.) You can enjoy media about fictional cats, whether Garfield or Puss in Boots, but it doesn’t necessarily trigger any “Kitty!” response.

This, then, is the essence of a cat: they are, like dogs, invited into our homes and beds… but unlike the dopily-worshipful dog, the cat conceals a core of the untamable wild.

We invite these tiny predators into our homes, and are hypnotized: deep down, the cat ‘knows’ they can hunt us, and we ‘know’ it too. The ‘horror movie villain’ lives on our couch, offering a constant slight frisson as they elegantly steal their way through the living room or they stalk us.

A serial killer, but our serial killer.