Many cat owners say they prefer cats over dogs because cats are a bit more aloof, and make us work for their attention. Interestingly enough, the brain of a cat is more similar to a human brain than that of a dog. The region of our brains and of the brains of cats that are responsible for emotion are identical in placement, according to What Cats Are Made Of.
Maybe we love cats because they remind us of what we would be like if we had the luxury of expressing our emotions with hissing and meowing rather than, say, passive aggressive sticky notes. Funny pet videos often capture the strange links between humanity and animals. One of the most popular pet videos to ever be recorded, for example, is of a cat named Fatso playing a keyboard. Although this cat was actually being manipulated by human hands unseen by the camera, there is another series of pet videos featuring a cat named Nora who can actually play, or at least tap in a semi musical way, the piano.
Cats have been with us since at least 9,500 years ago, which is the age of a grave found on Cyprus that has the oldest pet cat inside. Since then, human and cat have lived together and helped each other out. A brief respite from this harmony was during the Spanish Inquisition, at which time the Pope decided cats were evil and ordered them burned. This allowed the rat population to explode, which helped lead to the wide scale devastation of the Black Plague. In a way, this illustrated how important the cat had become to the human race. Today, 73 million cats make this animal the most popular pet in North America, outranking the dog by 10 million members.
It is not surprising, in this way, that cats have become the subject of some of the most widely circulated short videos of all time. Sometimes we marvel at the dexterity and intelligence of cats who play pianos, try to talk, or learn complicated maneuvers that will get them food. Other times, though, the best cat pet videos are the ones where cats get pure joy out of boxes, are scared by commonplace objects, or just have very grumpy faces.