A feline encounter

Recently, I happened to have a chance meeting with a friend's cat. Now, I have limited experience with pets and was justifiably uncomfortable. The cat was much more confident as it was accustomed to humans. So, it decided to jump on yours truly who in turn jumped onto the couch. When the chain-jumping ceased, I realised that it wasn't a bad beast. It slowly dawned upon me that it lived my notion of an ideal life. Food and drinks are available at will. Somebody else does the dishes. Massages are given frequently. You can do stupid things and people will think its cute and not brand you an idiot.

Anyway, as I dolefully compared our lives, I started wondering how did we ever think of domesticating animals. I think it is because we like to have dependents. Dependents make our lives worthwhile, provide some sort of a purpose. I know it might sound cold-hearted, but I'm inclined to think this is the same reason why people want to have babies. I'm not saying people love their kids because they are dependent on them. The thought of having a baby probably originated from the need for dependents. Love then, probably takes over. Because, you can't love something that doesn't yet exist (or can you?). As you can see, I'm working quite hard to extricate myself from this mess I've landed in.

Reaffirmation of one's worthiness is probably the cause of several social phenomena. We could hypothesize that large families are probably a sign of greater self-doubt of the procreators. We could maybe even stretch the theory to say that people in countries with large populations are probably less sure of themselves (on an average).

Ok, we have strayed from the cat :) As I was saying, the audience with the cat went pretty well and we agreed on more frequent meetings.