(This post is dedicated to my fuzzy butt kitty, who definitely had me trained.)The June 2009 issue1 of Scientific American has an article titled "The Taming of the Cat." After reading the article, not to mention living with cats my whole life, I really think it would have been more accurate to call it "The Training of the Human." It really gives the impression that humans didn't domesticate cats as much as the cats just kind of decided to move in. "Well, there are mice over there and the humans seem too stupid to catch them. They also throw out all the good parts of the big animals they eat. They're pretty dumb, but they don't seem too bad overall, although the smaller versions are much scarier than the big ones, always shrieking and running and pulling our tails. Ouch! Ok, time for some claw-point corporal punishment! Teach you to do that again!"
And according to Heather, that's pretty much how Pandora showed up at Heather'n'Dave's, a filthy, undersized, 5-month-old ball of fur. (She was, at that time, one of the ugliest cats I had ever seen. She grew into one of the most beautiful.) Her appearance was so mysterious, I thought of her as being sui generis, the result of spontaneous generation. If any creature could will herself into being, Pandora was it.
1Which I have finished, which means I am on the July issue and it's still July! Of course, I probably won't actually finish the July issue in July, and of course the August issue has already arrived, but at least I'm almost caught up!
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