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The only reason my house cat has not murdered me is because he is 4kg, and I'm not. He loves me though.
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Cats are not really domesticated. I've heard various terms but semi-domesticated probably serves. They're very adaptable but not pack animals. You're sort of safe with house cats because they're small. You get less safe as the body weight goes up the scale.
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It’s funny to hear they are not pack animals. I’m sure that is technically the case, especially in the wild, but my house cats definitely cling to me and follow me around like I am their leader. They groom/fight to try to establish a hierarchy below me, and when my partner comes home from work immediately switch allegiance to her, who they clearly see as the dominant mammal in the house.

They don’t go outside (they can’t really, it’s too busy by the road here and they’d decimate the wildlife, but I live with it because ultimately we’re doing them a huge favor by giving them a home, post-rescue) so I am sure that has something to do with it. Perhaps infantilism is keeping them in this pack headspace? But even then my mother’s cat — rural, murderous, tough tabby tom — treats her like a god and the rest of us as an annoyance.

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As I wrote, they're adaptable. But there's a difference between true pack animals with an established hierarchy and being solitary but being open to other cats and species. Certainly, some cats are more pack-like (lions) and others are, or are more open to, being largely solitary.
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My cat always looked at me like "if only you were smaller..."
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I'd be getting scared when a cat reaches the 20kg threshold. I'm about 90kg, so thats a 4.5x ratio :)

Cats are the perfect killing machines (apart from maybe sharks) :)

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There's a bobcat that lives around here. He's on my porch now and then, and I also see its tracks in the snow.

It doesn't look like it wants to be petted. I stay clear.

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Many people don't know that Craigslist has a "best of" which includes this (relevant) post that makes me laugh every time I read it:

https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/ric/6881185958.html

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Yep, a bobcat. But much smaller than the one around here.
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my cat at its peak weight is about 8kg, and that's the size that i'd get a bit nervous around if i didn't know it's a tame housecat that runs away at sight of a mouse...
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See also "why you should never put a chimp and a little person in the same room" by Penn Gillette
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>"I'd be getting scared when a cat reaches the 20kg threshold" - most likely even 10kg cat will shred you before you could blink. They're insanely fast and surprisingly strong for size. Furry explosives they are
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My main coon is over 10kg and is basically harmless
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A tamed lion ripped the face off of Melanie Griffith.
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I still need to watch that movie, I feel obligated to see it after so many people suffered so many injuries while filming it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roar_(film)#Injuries_and_set_d...

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And you'd think Tippi Hedren would have learned not to go around wild, untamed animals after what her character wrnt through in The Birds!
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I've watched a lot of horror shows that had no effect on me. But this one wasn't a horror show, it was for real. I found it very disturbing. I couldn't believe what I was watching.
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I think the lady that got mauled to death in 2018 at the lion preserve that guy works at might disagree with you if she hadn’t been y’know, mauled to death by a lion.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/28/africa/woman-killed-lion-...

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I mean, taming animals is trivial.

FTFA: "The man took the animal home, believing it to be a domestic breed. But after about a year of living with the clearly wild animal, he realized it would be better off at a sanctuary."

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There's a YouTube (and other) channel out there about a guy and his (I use the possessive with caveats) coyote (named Weave). His motto is "Anything can be a pet if you don’t mind getting bit."
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