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Comment by ianai | Hacker News Reader

Still reading, but this seems counter factual:

“Whereas dogs have been bred for utility, cats have been bred solely for appearance.”

My understanding was cats largely served as pest control from the human perspective. It’s probably why they continue to hunt even when well fed.

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I think the point is that when cats were intentionally bred, it was for appearance. The natural selection of feral/domestic non-bred cats took its own course.

Cats have been following people around for millennia whereas “breeding“ is more of a last couple centuries thing. Some breeds do have personality differences like ragdolls. They’re also generally harder to breed because they’re more likely to crossbreed with wild cats-which is how we think we got Maine coons.

+1...but most farmers I've known who did have "barnyard" cats seemed quite aware of which cats were or were not good at vermin control. None of the farmers have (that I've heard) "intentionally bred" barnyard cats. But they may not hesitate to, ah, "strongly influence" which barnyard cats enjoy reproductive success. Sometimes in ways which non-farmers with pet cats might prefer not to hear about.

Maybe that's why cats like to bring dead bodies to their owners. Because cats that do that were noted as good hunters.

I mean, probably not, but wahtever.

That’s their behavior when a kitten needs to learn to hunt and kill. They’re literally saying they’ve never seen you hunt and kill prey so they want you to learn.

It's possible it's both. Natural instinct to bring prey animals for the kitten so it learns might have been adopted to gives proofs to humans that cat serves useful purpose.

We had a cat who would line up his kills in a line on the grass. Very much as a “presentation.”

My wife used to have one day a week when a succession of music students would come to the house. She insists that on that specific day of the week her cats would line the front path with "offerings" for the expected visitors. They had a keen sense of hospitality.

My semi-barn cat would present me with mouse entrails; arranged like an anatomical model. Once he even presented them on a bed of grass like a fancy chef! He had to bring the blades of grass up a cat ramp and through a cat door. I think he'd predict when I would visit so as to have a display ready for me. Once I came early and a lot more mouse was present, but I came back in a bit and it was just entrails.

Although he has been spending a lot of time in the house this winter, and it's been months since I've gotten a present.

Back in the day (~1930), my grandparents had a "semi-pet" rat terrier (a small working dog), and kept a fair number of animals (chickens, a few pigs, cow, etc.). When the rat terrier was feeling ignored/unloved, it would head back to the barn and start hunting rats. Lots of rats. Which were all brought back up to the house (dead), and lined up on the little walk to the kitchen door - for grandma to notice, and happily fuss over the dog for having killed.

When the dog was not feeling insecure/unappreciated, it didn't seem all that interested in hunting rats.

Castration or straight up euthanizing?

Many cat breeds enjoy human companionship much more so than non-pedigree cats. And they're not as scared of everything around them (e.g. Maine Coon).

Anectodal, but I’ve have many cats over the years. The two Maine coons I’ve had (unrelated to each other) were by far the least intelligent in my opinion and observation. All the others have been mixes.

So dogs are tools and cats are art?

art typically appreciates in value while a cat's value is appreciated

Not sure if it is counterfactual.

We know that dogs were definitely bred for utility.

But cats were already effective pest controllers and may simply have moved in with humans after being tolerated.

Cats never needed selective breeding for the jobs they already did; they definitely have been bred for appearance more recently.

You're reading the sentence incorrectly, regarding the order of the focusing adverb, solely. The meaning changes depending on the adverb's placemment. For ex: "bred solely for appearance" does not mean the same as "solely bred for appearance" in the context of the full sentence. [1]

[1] https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wc/adverb-placement-gene...

Surely not solely for appearance. Cats play pretty well with humans in both senses of the phrase.

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