Feline Power
"Oh Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display
Connote a fairly well developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I none the less consider you a true and valued friend."
- Lieutenant Commander Data, Ode to Spot, Star Trek, the Next Generation.
The affluent power brokers and government workers in the Washington D.C. area tend to reside in Northern Virginia or Montgomery County, Maryland. Montgomery County, as a consequence, is one of the wealthiest in the nation, lavishing dollars and attention on public services, particularly schools. Affluence and contentment breed ennui, and boredom is the mother of frivolous thoughts.
While many communities in the nation struggle with and fret about reducing class size, paving new roads, or finding new landfills, Montgomery County has enough spare political attention that it can concentrate grave concern on ameliorating the last remaining ills of mankind. Montgomery County recently considered legislation forbidding cats from roaming unescorted outdoors. Every inconvenience or bump in the road of life is another opportunity for government's ever-present, benevolent, and intrusive supervision. The potential of cats disturbing the midnight peace with cat howling and the deposit of cat droppings were grave public threats that could not slip by unnoticed by a protective government.
Fortunately, the notion teetered and finally collapsed under the ponderous weight of its own absurdity. The idea, however, was bandied about long enough to remind us of different metaphors for governing philosophy.
Dogs have been domesticated and junior members of human families far longer than cats. Dogs hunt in packs with a specific hierarchy dominated by an alpha male. Given the genetic predispositions of dogs to perpetual loyalty and happy obsequious obedience, they provide ideal human companions.
Cats, by contrast, have changed little in the last few million years, though they appear to have been domesticated between 3500 and 1500 BC. Dogs helped man hunt, but cats many civilization feasible. It is the rodent-reducing function of cats that made the large-scale storage of grain, and thus civilization, possible. Cats though, unlike dogs, seem to recognize the human dependence on their skills and are far more reticent to slavish acquiesence to human whims.
If people are viewed like happily submissive dogs, panting and eager to please their masters for a chance pat on the head or a little treat, governing philosophy follows accordingly. We employ familial images like community, village, or "Big Brother" as soothing euphemisms for dominance of the pack by a presumably benign and knowing hierarchical structure.
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