There was a case where a baby was killed by a Jack Russell (no bigger than a cat). The JR decided it wanted to share the cot, so it tried to move the baby, it’s thought. By grabbing it by the head.
Cats are very efficient predators. Dogs basically use distributed computing; individual dogs are not too clever but their communication skills are excellent and they co-operate, so the unit of dog is the pack. The unit of cat is one cat; a cat’s brain has all the functions needed for survival, but pared down. When a cat wants something it goes for it by the most direct route. They’ve adapted to humans enough that we tolerate an alpha predator in the house, but nothing else is a given.
For instance…
Well known lion behaviour is that a new top male will go around killing cubs to reduce competition for its own. It’s hard wired behaviour. If the humans bring home a new baby, a young cat might be deciding not to stick around to be killed by the male human. You just don’t know till it happens how deep the programming goes.
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