And what’s more, they serve almost no human purpose, which is partially why I like them. From a review of Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet, a book on cats by John Bradshaw.

Bradshaw, a biologist at the University of Bristol in England, has studied animal behavior and cats in particular for the last 30 years. The starting point of his analysis is that cats are still essentially wild animals. They wandered into our encampments when we first started to store harvested grains, which attracted mice.

Unlike dogs, which have been greatly changed by domestication from their wolf ancestor, cats have almost never been bred for a purpose. They caught mice well enough, and their kittens made attractive companions. So cats have stayed much the same, with any evolutionary trend toward domestication constrained by frequent interbreeding with wild cats.

To this day the population of domestic cats is maintained in a semiferal state by the practice of neutering. About the only males available for domestic female cats to breed with are the wildest and least people-friendly tomcats who have escaped into the feral cat population. Some 85 percent of all cat matings, Dr. Bradshaw writes, are arranged by cats themselves, meaning with feral cats.

The result is that when cats interact with people, they have to rely almost entirely on their natural social behaviors, which are not highly developed. . . .

Also in the cat behavioral repertory are grooming and rubbing against known cats. When cats rub up against you or invite their head to be stroked, they are treating you as a nonhostile cat. An upright tail is a greeting sign between cats, and ‘is probably the clearest way cats show their affection for us,’ Dr. Bradshaw writes.

Biting the hands that feed her and attacking my toes – as my own feral-born pussy cat routinely does – does not seem to show an entirely well developed sense of self-preservation, at least not the preservation of the cushy life she is currently privileged to lead. Still, she’s in no danger of being asked to fend for herself.