Anyone who has ever owned a cat knows that these animals are not quite tame. Each fuzzy, purring companion shows an independent streak in any number of ways, whether it’s the mouse left at the doorstep or the refusal to come when called. Now Bradshaw, an animal behavior scientist, deftly sums up the latest science that attempts to discover what’s going on inside the kitty brain.
Bradshaw begins with an in-depth look at how the cat ended up in our homes over thousands of years, evolving from wild to — mostly — domestic. “Full domestication,” he notes, “means that humankind has complete control over what an animal eats, where it goes, and most crucially, which individuals are allowed to breed.” While true for many house cats, large populations of feral cats remain largely untended.