People believe that dogs were domesticated between about 18,000 and 30,000 years ago. This is well before cats were domesticated at a maximum of about 14,500 years ago (until recently believed to be 9,500 years ago). At one time, on the planet there was one domesticated cat and one domesticated dog. The contract for the cat was that she kept down the rodent population on the farm where she lived. In return she was to receive food, shelter and safety as provided by her human companion. The contract for the dog was that he should provide unswerving loyalty and companionship together with any particular task that he was employed to do such as security measures, seeing off strangers and unwanted people. The dog was and still is a utility animal. The cat was also a utility animal but has now developed into a pure companion although there are some utility cats.
So between humans and cats and dogs there was an unwritten contract and the terms were as stated above. All the cats and dogs that have been born and died since invariably fulfilled the terms of this contract. Sadly, the terms and conditions have often been broken by the other party; humans.
Cats and dogs are more loyal, trustworthy and reliable than human beings. Sometimes people think that they break the contract by turning on people, biting and scratching them. But when this happens it can usually be traced back to a piece of human stupidity or carelessness. Perhaps it might be cruelty but I think you can say with confidence that all the problems that people have with cats and dogs can be traced back to people because they have breached what should have been an immutable contract.
Over the years the contract with dogs has been varied because new utility roles have been carved out for them. In addition to protecting people they aid in hunts, destroy vermin, pull sledges, sniff out drugs, sniff for blood, stiff out money at airports and stiff out dead or living bodies in destroyed buildings after earthquakes. The dog’s nose is a wonderful instrument that can be well employed by people. The dogs who are employed in this way are normally well looked after and the contract on both sides is kept. But in general, when we take together all the cats and dogs on the planet, we see huge failure on the human side.
It is said that there are about 900 million dogs on the planet but the majority of them are unowned, community, stray or feral dogs surviving on their own or in packs. It is said that on the planet there are about 500 million cats. Once again the majority will be living without the benefit of being cared for by a human being in a one-to-one relationship. This is a symptom of the failure of the domestication of these species.
There are many other failures such as the enormous amount of abuse that humans perpetrate on cats and dogs. Cat and dog meat in China and Vietnam and other Asian countries was not part of the contract. There is also cat and dog meat in Switzerland and America although on a much smaller scale. It was not part of the contract for one party to eat the other party. The massive fur trade in China is also a terrible breach of the contract because it entails brutality and desperate cruelty against dogs and cats. They are totally unprotected by the laws of China. There are no animal welfare laws protecting domestic cats and dogs in China. This is the second largest economy on the planet. And yet they have a massive hole in their legislation and they don’t care. They see nothing wrong with it and they certainly don’t see their breach of contract; an ancient one, a verbal one and one that should have been upheld with much more integrity and reliability by the fallible human.