in all fairness, waking up a human everyday hours before feeding time and all the other things I'm reading in this thread, the cruelty goes both ways.

now the human has responsibility because they started it when they brought the cat in.

though the cat doesn't seem to mind because hey free food and they get to act however the way they want and the human will think it's adorable.

it is so weird. even though as a human I also find cats often to be adorable. this is a reason I would never get one.

It is an admirable quality to recognize that you are not an appropriate owner for an animal.

haha thanks I guess :) interesting way of looking at it. Not sure why you chose to generalise it over all animals. The strange one-sided adversarial relationship I sketched is quite particular to cats and cat owners. I just don't see myself willingly entering that role.

But the relationship between dogs and humans seems a lot less alien to me. I might one day, I could use the company. But it's a lot of responsibility.

Sorry I wasn't intending to generalise in that sense.