tim-babb

Tim Babb @tr_babb · 19h liking cats is a cultural universal I suspect the common wisdom that cats are recently or weakly domesticated is just wrong. my unsubstantiated hunch is that humans and cats have been co-evolving for tens of thousands of years; they're laser-targeted for our psyches [Embedded excerpt, quoted text] 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.