My Love-LIfe, in a nutshell.
Perhaps not in the same manner (though I’ve known a couple of very dog-like cats, as well as some rather cat-like dogs). But I’ve known and do know cats who will climb up me if not picked up; and almost every cat I’ve ever lived with has shown enthusiastic affection for at least one person.
Even feral “domestic” cats are social, given the chance – just not with humans. Cats who haven’t been handled in a positive fashion by humans by the time they’re about 4 to 6 months old are extremely difficult to socialize to humans. But if there’s enough food, by choice they live in cat colonies, sharing kitten-raising duties.
It’s a myth that felis catus is by nature solitary. Many cat species are; but not that one.
To raise from a cub, probably. When you buy an adult that has not been tamed, not so much.
Something I haven’t been able to figure out is that by all accounts the domestic cat derives from the African Wildcat, domesticated around 10,000 years ago. But the African Wildcat is solitary. So if feral domestic cats are now social, how did that change in behavior arise? If it arose by artificial selection for cats that are sociable in human company, I wonder if any research has been done to identify the relevant mutations. I had a look a couple of years ago and couldn’t find anything, I’m going to try again now.
Although it does occur to me that such knowledge might be abused, if it’s only one or two specific mutations. I really don’t want people paying for transgenic caracals as pets any more than wild type caracals.
That would in fact be incredibly stupid. Absolutely from a kitten.
Maybe they’re all trying to be the next Siegfried and/or Roy, except with a much lesser chance of being dragged around by their cats.
I’d say rather a similar chance of being dragged, or at least fatally mauled by their cats, along with much less chance at great celebrity and income derived from their cats.
Probably not from the perspective of the people creating these videos. 
Completely a WAG, but here goes:
African Wildcats that could learn to tolerate proximity to humans also, as a side effect, had greater tolerance for their own kind. Those most tolerant were most able to access food sources near/in human dwellings. These would also be most tolerant of their own species. In addition, being more tolerant of each other allowed for more cooperative kitten protecting and raising strategies among wild/feral members of the species. Over time, with better/more consistent access to food, protection from larger predators afford by humans (directly and indirectly), and cooperative kitten raising allowing for more kittens to survive those with these traits survived better and out-reproduced the more wary/solitary members of the species, leading to the suite of “domestication” genes spreading and becoming common in F. catus
Voila - the domestic cat is born.
Well, they are adorable:
I would not want a fit, 35-pound cat even if it was behaviorally the same as a normal housecat (yes, housecats can get that fat, but they’re basically immobile blobs).
Even friendly play with a 10-pound cat can cause… damage. 35 lbs would send me to the hospital, not to mention destroy all my furniture.
Yes - I suppose you could summarize that as “natural selection for a beneficial self-domestication trait”. That account sounds more plausible than artificial selection, since I think the current view is that both dogs and cats probably spontaneously self-domesticated.
I was just in South Africa, and African Wildcats in the wild are very skittish and elusive, the most you usually get is a glimpse of one disappearing. But there’s a resident wildcat in Satara Camp in Kruger that I saw for the first time on this trip. Very cool seeing essentially a reenactment of self-domestication as it scrounged around the barbeques for scraps. But definitely not yet at the petting stage.
Yeah. You can kinda domesticate a cougar. But its still dangerous.
The only wild cat which takes well to being a pet is the Asian Leopard cat, and even then they are bred in captivity for 3-4 generations before being sold as pets (Bengal cats). Mind you a Asian Leopard cat is cat sized.
Yeah, since they can be about the size of a big house cat.
I’ve heard that they can be unpleasant.
aren’t those kind of slow and boring …
ahhhh … caracAl you say …
heading straight off to “misread thread titles”
Much safer however.
According to Scientific American, that’s pretty close. Although domestication occurred first in the Fertile Crescent, probably when the kitties noticed that those weird hairless apes were storing grain, which attracted lots of mice and other tasty treats, making it worthwhile to hang out with the hoo-mans.
Yeah. I have three friendly, easy-going, extremely tame pet cats. None of them try to hurt me. When the kittens chew on my arm they are extremely gentle and don’t come close to breaking my skin, and they keep their paws velveted when they wrestle with me. But the old lady sometimes pokes me with a claw when she wants my attention. And the kittens sometimes pounce on my toes with their claws extended. Hey, it’s a toe! It moved! It’s not part of me!
I have a lot of little scratches. No big deal, because my cats are little.
I hadn’t heard of them before, but what beautiful cats. I’d love to see one in the wild, not in a zoo. Of course that won’t happen but you-tube has a reason for existing.
I have had several Maine Coon mixes and currently live with a full MC. They are big cats. They are gentle cats. They have big feet and big mouths with correspondingly big claws and mouths. They are cats. When triggered, they will react like any other house cat and can do serious damage to skin. Wild cats the same size would not be advisable.
I expect that much of the selection was done by the cats themselves: the ones who were least shy of hanging out with humans were the ones that did so. Repeat, for multiple generations (and a generation in cats is a year at most.)
Being social with other cats may be connected with being social with humans; but it may not have been just a side effect. Wild cats generally need to be solitary because their hunting territories won’t easily support multiple adult cats. Human grainaries and barns support so many rodents that they can also support multiple cats. If only one cat claims the whole territory, and all the kittens move out in different directions, then the one cat’s production will be all the kittens born in that place. If a female kitten or two stays put and keeps living with Mama, or two or more female kittens move together into one place – more kittens will be born there. If kitten-raising duties are shared, the survival rate will be higher. And the kittens who do move out from that location, of whatever gender, will be more prepared, both genetically and by experience, to share their next location.
Maybe it was the advantage of being social with other cats in the situation of sufficient food supply that drove the willingness to be social with humans, instead of the other way around. Or maybe they were both useful independently, but they reinforced and fed on each other.
I am somewhat curious whether there’s any connection with the genes in domesticated foxes; which apparently among other things often developed white in their coats, which is also pretty common in domestic cats. Cats, however, haven’t developed floppy ears or curly tails – though some modern dogs haven’t either.