Your cat - or Felix Domesticus - is a singular creature. It will live with you contentedly, allowing you to feed it, stroke it and generally adore it but, every now and then, it will give you a swipe of the unsheathed claw just to remind you its ancestors were wild and ferocious, and
it could be ferocious too - if it could be bothered - which it can't.
Occasionally it will have to go "berresk" and fly round the room, 3 feet above the floor, by means of the curtains, wallpaper and 3-piece suite. This (according to my late father - a cat lover, cat trainer and cat connoisseur) is having a "Tommy Berry Do". No human being (apart from my late father) seems to have a clue who Tommy Berry is or was - but Felix Domesticus does, and pays homage to this mysterious figure in its flight up and down your best curtains (velour is favoured - a downward-sliding cat's claws can make the most intricate patterns in the nap).
The reward for your patience, and your persistant worship in the form of providing very expensive cat food to be ignored and allowed to become encrusted with bluebottle eggs, is that Felix Domesticus will keep your environment free of vermin. It will also reward you with the eminently sensual brushing of your lower legs with its silky fur and the companionship of its presence on your knee as it purrs you into willing submission.
Cats! Love them or hate them - you'd be overrun with rats and mice without them.
