Reason why people like Maine Coon cats with human faces

Maine Coon cats with human faces have gone viral. People are fascinated by them. I am sure that the breeder has been inundated with phone calls. It must have taken her 10 or more years to create cats like these. They are masterpieces. It is as if a sculpture has sculpted a work of art out of clay but she did it through selective breeding. But shouldn't we prefer domestic cats which look like domestic cats? Isn't that the whole point of having a cat in the first place?

Maine Coon with human face. Photo: Catsvill County cattery.

The idea is to live with an animal which brings a bit of nature and the wild into the home while being domesticated and therefore fitting in with family life. What's the point of a domestic cat looking like a human? I struggle to find a reason why the Internet is fascinated with these creatures.

I can think of two interconnected reasons. The first is that humankind so self-interested and so egocentric that humans admire another creature which mimics their behaviour. Maine Coons which look like people do not mimic the behaviour of humans but you can imagine them doing it. And in any case people treat their domestic cats as members of the family and many cat owners see their cats as little people, even babies. So the first reason is that people want to see an animal in their image so they truly do become a member of the family.

For decades when artists painted wild and domestic cats even the great Leonardo, they gave them human faces. It was instinctive. A failure in art. It must be due to egocentric thoughts.

A failed attempt by an artist of the 19th century to achieve a good likeness of the wild cats. They have human faces like the Maine Coons. Pics in the public domain.

SEE SOME MORE MAINE COONS WITH HUMAN FACES

Secondly, people are inherently fascinated with the unusual, the rare, and even the freakish. Freaky behaviour, freaky appearances are of interest to the media and individual people. Perhaps this interest in the unusual stems from the fact that the human race is inherently bored. 99.9% of life is boring for most people. It's just a never ending merry-go-round of self-maintenance. It's a treadmill, a boring almost limitless treadmill. Anything to break up the routine and the boredom.

A brief few minutes of entertainment looking at something unusual, rare and, yes, freakish serves the purpose.

But, we shouldn't be like this. We should like our cats to be like their wildcat ancestors. There is great beauty in the domestic cat's anatomy and appearance. Why distort this beauty to try and achieve a cat that looks like a human? 

And think about the selective breeding that took place which I've mentioned. How many cats did this breeder create which did not meet her standards? Of course we don't know and we don't know what happened to those cats that did not look enough like humans.

Did she cull them i.e. kill them at an early stage of their life? I have no evidence of that. Perhaps this woman or man has enough buyers of their cats to sell everyone of them at a good price. But then cat breeding is inherently immoral in a world where there is an excess of cats and millions of unwanted cats. Nobody has discussed the morality of what this person is doing. Except me on this page, right now.