Niche Expansion and the Natural History of Human-Cat Kinship

Domestic cats (Felis catus) have flourished alongside humans for 10,000 years. What accounts for this success? We argue here that cats and humans collaborate in this success because cats are very good at niche expansion across multiple dimensions into new human-facilitated niche space and at niche space saturation across both new and old niche spaces. Cats are neither simply biologically adapted nor simply domesticated by humans but possess their own agency. Cats involve themselves in human projects and benefit from human care and kinship; they develop forms of tolerance and trust but also independence and self-reliance. To demonstrate this thesis about cats, we explore the various dimensions of the cat niche, and in each case we ask, how does that dimension differ between modern cats and their wild ancestors? How have humans collaborated through time with cats to expand the cat niche in multiple dimensions? What have been the cumulative effects or consequences of these expansions? We show that even attempts to control or eradicate cats can play into forms of niche expansion. Our goal is to direct scholarly attention to the relations of participation among humans and other species, beyond the narrow focus on species as more or less isolated and stable bundles of traits and behaviors.