Well… per the entertainment choices people have made over time I’ve never heard of a staged (house) cat fight for entertainment purposes. Cat fights can be pretty vicious & spectacular, what makes the dogs, cocks &fish a better entertainment choice for betting & general spectacle than cats fighting?
Cats would be very unreliable combatants. They will puff up and defend their own territory, but take them to some strange place and they will be confused and frightened. Instead of fighting each other in the ring, they are much more likely to both be running around in a blind panic looking for a way to escape or hide.
This is exactly correct.
Dogs are desccended from pack animals that will fight to establish social dominance in any setting. It’s relatively easy to selectively breed and train them to be hyper-dominant and aggressive animals that will always attempt to assert dominance by violence.
Cats are only semi-social at best and while they will develop loose social hiearchies in groups, strictly speaking they will fight only to establish territorial claims. So two cats plopped in a strange arena, while they might be the most ornery, battle-scarred toms on earth, will probably spit and hiss and retreat to opposite corners, even if goaded. You might get the occasional fight, but it’d be to unreliable for bloodsport afficianados.
Now what has been done is to introduce a dog and another wild animal, like a bobcat into a ring. The dog will attack and the cat will defend itself. But two cats wouldn’t generally work.
- Tamerlane
Yeah, what everyone esle has said. And add to that the whole concept of getting cats to do what you want them to. There might be great enmity between them, but the minute they recognize that fighting is what you want – forget it. 
How about a bunny fight?
Or, how about a somewhat more humane fight to the death!
People do fight cats- they tie their tails together and hang them over something. They fight them to the death- it’s awful.
I’ve thought of tying Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson together and hanging them over something – talk about a cat fight!
Hey, it’s a joke! I can’t believe we got seven posts into a thread with “cat fight” in the title before somebody said it.
cat fight, chocolate syurp, oh yeah.
Another minor reason that occurred to me is that most of the undomesticated cats are actually pretty large and really freaking dangerous… there’s a reason the California mountain lion was hunted almost to extinction. Even if it were possible to train them as fighting creatures, it would be a pretty risky job.
Meh. General Woundwort is not impressed.
Darn, and I was just going to post a two-word reply: Foxy. Boxing.
BTW, I didn’t know cockfights were “staged”… That means they’re fixed, right? No wonder I lost all my money betting with those Dominicans! They wuz all in cahoots!
<Kramer> Ke-ke-ke-catfight?! </Kramer>
People make sense in this thread, but put simply, I can’t see cats putting up with that shit, at least not reliably.
Joe
Damn you beating me to this comment.
“Staged” meaning “presented” not “fixed.”
This sounds like a very reliable way to get them to fight, if you ask me.
It is dangeroulsy close to just plain torture, though. Bear in mind that people who do animal fights don’t make it out of cruelty. They just don’t see the harm in it, they are very proud of their animals and treat them like royalty until they enter the arena. That they die fighting is just very unfortunate and not at all desirable. I think it would be very hard to look innocent tying two animals from their tails and hanging them, though. Everybody has some limits.
(and good luck untying the winner and taking him home after the fight)
I seriously hate to ask you this, but where have you heard about such an awful idea? Who does this?
I was over at a friend of a friend’s house and I noticed that they had pitbulls (pretty ones, but big ones that were left out in a this horrible dirty pen in the back yard) and oodles of really pissed off sounding, half their feathers missing roosters.
Thinking the worst, I casually asked friend of the friend’s dad what the roosters are for. He happily informed me that he fights them and that’s how they make the payments on their new car. I then asked about the pitbulls, he laughed and said that of course he fights them- he’s got the meanest dogs on the city.
Now I’m a dog lover-- well an animal lover- so I’m sure my disgust was terribly evident. I then said, “Don’t you feel bad about hurting the dogs and roosters?” He just laughed and said they’re only animals. He then went on to tell me how they fight cats too- they tie the tails together (I don’t know if the actual tails are tied together or if they tie them with something) and then hang the cats over a pole. In what I can only assume is fear for their lives and panic, the cats fight. My friend’s friend said most of them just die. It’s not really a money thing, it’s an entertainment thing.
After learning that, I brought up the question of fighting cats to various people and apparently it’s a big deal around this town. Animal control has had to go to insane lengths as far as adopting cats out, because people are using them to fight.
Oh and needless to say, I left soon after our discussion about fighting animals. From my car that was parked in front of their house, I called the police and explained everything I saw. All of the animals were taken away and the family was fined. I can’t remember if dad got jail time.
Cats are used for sport in some Central and South American countries. The most notorious of which is “cat juggling.”