The Lion In The Living Room

Cats are the new kings of the jungle. There are over 600 million of them in the world, and the number is only growing. With bigger predators pushed to the brink of extinction by human development, the household cat is now at the top of the food chain. Unlike dogs, who have been systematically bred into subservience over thousands of years of domestication, cats are unchanged genetically from when they first came into contact with humans. If dogs are man’s best friend, cats are our wary companion, happy to follow behind us, but always maintaining their independence. Like humans, cats have remade the world in their own image, and it isn’t always clear which species is getting the better deal in the relationship. In The Lion in the Living Room, Abigail Tucker takes a deep, fascinating and often hilarious dive into the world of cats. After reading it, you will never look at your pet the same way again.

Scientists have traced the genetic origins of modern cats to a single species in the ancient Middle East. It appears they just showed up as humans began living in villages, made themselves comfortable and started feeding off the scraps. As Tucker puts it, they were less domestic recruits than invaders. Humans traditionally domesticate animals by hijacking their dominance hierarchy and establishing themselves as the alpha of the group. Cats don’t have one; they are solitary predators who don’t need a pack to survive. The key difference between cats and dogs, as well as every other barnyard animal who has been suited to fit human needs, is they always maintained control of their reproduction. Cat breeders are a relatively modern invention: it’s only in the last fifty years that we have begun to create micro-species like the munchkin. For most of human history, the generic tabby cat has bred without our interference, creating huge populations of strays outside our control.

Once cats are established in an ecosystem, they are almost impossible to eliminate. “Breeding like rabbits” is the popular expression for quickly churning out kids, but cats aren’t far behind. Within five years, a male and female cat can have as many as 354,294 direct descendants. Neutering, the preferred method of keeping their population under control, can often backfire, since cats who don’t have to deal with the stress of mating and breeding live longer, while kittens born in colonies where there are fixed cats have better odds of survival. People who try to protect vulnerable populations of birds and smaller animals live in fear of cats. The odds are stacked against them: cats are relentless and intelligent predators with public opinion overwhelmingly on their side. The gun lobby doesn’t have anything on the cat lobby, and cats are much more dangerous, at least to other animals. They are responsible for 14% of vertebrate extinctions worldwide.

Cats don’t take long to make themselves at home. A century after they were introduced in Australia, the Aborigines viewed them as native animals, even though they decimated populations of animals who had never learned to fear them. These days, cats in Australia (pets and strays) eat more fish on an annual basis than humans. By hijacking our natural fondness for small and seemingly helpless creatures, they have flipped the domestication script. Cats have conditioned us; their purrs mimic the wails of an infant. While they are theoretically supposed to hunt rodents who spread disease, they mostly coexist with the other smaller animals who also feed on our garbage. Why would an alley cat hunt a rat when there’s more than enough trash to feed them both? Historians now believe cats were one of the prime carriers of the Black Plague.

One of the crazier findings presented in the book is that cats spread a microorganism that has infected the brains of over 60 million people. Once infected, people become more prone to risk-taking behavior that can lead to death. Cats are just the middleman: the bug starts in smaller animals who become easier for cats to kill after they are infected, who then spread the bug up the ladder. There might be a reason why so many ancient societies feared cats and treated them with some suspicion. As a rule, cat enthusiasts are more prone to mental health issues, though it’s unclear whether that’s more causation or correlation. Reports of schizophrenia have spiked in the last 200 years, at the same time cats have passed dogs as the most popular household pet.

Cats are the perfect animal for an urbanized society. When people lived in more rural settings, cats were more like presences who roamed around the farm than members of the family. However, as we began moving into apartments, the lack of upkeep and space cats need to survive made them more appealing. Just as important, they filled the void created by the lack of community inherent in city life. Sometimes you just want to go where everyone knows your name, even if they ignore you half the time. The changes in the cat/human relationship have happened quickly. Kitty litter was invented in 1947. Cats now outnumber dogs worldwide by a ratio of 3:1, even though dogs perform many functions, from aiding the blind, sniffing for bombs and guarding our homes, more important than being featured in memes.

However, the move indoors has not been all good news for cats. They are apex predators without a pyramid, and the lack of territory to call their own can make them uneasy, especially when they are living with other cats whom they don’t get along with. Many would prefer to live in a small cage they can control rather than an open space they cannot. Like Lucifer, they would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. While dogs have co-evolved with humans to the point where they need us to survive, cats would do just fine in a world without humans. They are an evolutionary masterpiece, a finely tuned killing and breeding machine that deigns to grace us with their presence. Cockroaches might not be the only things that survive a nuclear apocalypse.