Cats have a reputation for being self-absorbed and willing to eat their deceased owners without remorse.
This is all probably true. But, usually, they’re compared to dogs. But modern dogs have been artificially selected to be loyal and loving… mostly. That’s certainly the stereotype.
So, are cats really any different than other tamed mammals like a raccoon or a ferret or a rat?
I owned a ferret once. She would curl up and sleep on my belly when I read in bed, just like a cat might do. I never had doubt one, though, that the ferret wouldn’t eat me if she ever got seriously hungry.
Are cats really any different, or is it just the comparison with dogs as the most common household pets that make them stand out as self-oriented and vicious?
Yes, it’s dogs which have been bred to be hunting/shepherding/guarding are child/employee/slave-like toward humans. Dog breeds which have not been bred to be puppy-like towards humans like Huskies are not known for gentle docility.
In dire circumstances, I don’t believe any carnivorous animal (including humans!) would hesitate long before digging into the cadavers of their deceased fellow-mortals!
I am not sure my cats would eat me. They would be thoroughly disgusted with my dead body, though. I can see being buried in cat litter if they could get me in the box. They is eeee-vil, I tell you!
Tame is different than domesticated. Cats (and rats and ferrets) have been domesticated and bred for certain qualities. Before becoming house pets, cats mostly served as rodent hunters for people, so their desirable qualities were different than what dogs were bred for. Their natural social structure is also different than dogs.
The raccoon has not been domesticated, and is a really bad house pet.
Dogs’ barking is also plenty more audible than cats’ meowing; so it’s no big surprise that dogs are less likely to be left alone with a corpse for days or weeks. Just sayin’.
I just finished reading the book “The Character of Cats” by Stephen Budiansky and one of the major takeaways about why cats are the way they are is that they’re the only domesticated animal whose wild counterparts are completely asocial (rodents probably fall more in the tamed category than domesticated). They only became social when living with humans, and even in feral conditions tend only to co-habitate reluctantly. Cats also haven’t been selectively bred to any real degree. Coat color, hair length, and some fairly minor changes in body shape are the only real variations, none of which are recognized as separate breeds in the way dogs are because the genetics don’t bear that out. So to compare cats and dogs is definitely apples and oranges, you’d be better off comparing cats and wolves since cats are much closer to their wild brethren. They only don’t eat us when we’re alive because we can fight back.
