fill emptiness with food . that ' s what the holiday is aboot <| sep |> I don ' t think this is the whole answer , but we haven ' t bred cats like we have bred dogs for the thousands of years past we don ' t have the same working relationship that coevolved between humans and canines . Sure , they moused around the castle , or kept the rats out of graineries , but not quite to the extent that we put dogs to work . With a few fancy breed exceptions Siamese , Himalayan , etc . , which is a relatively modern hobby , we have simply taken the cat as it has come to us . We haven ' t rewarded particular behavioral traits , nor physical , by repeated breeding , like we did dogs . I don ' t know , however , and I don ' t know if anyone does , whether there is an inherent , ancient , genetic predisposition towards adaptive behavior in dogs as opposed to cats that made them amenable to work with and for humans , which made it beneficial for us to bother selecting for different traits . If we had had the same working relationship with cats so many millennia ago , we might have different toy breeds like we do with dogs . I know that doesn ' t directly address your question , but it ' s crucial to understand that particular historical difference between cats ' and dogs ' relationship with humans .