Chemical Engineering in Daily Life – Question 80: Why do cats catch mice yet also like to steal food?

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The roles of cats today: as pets, for catching mice, and for eating cat meat. The domestication of cats for household use must have a history of around 10,000 years, right? Specifically, was it to catch mice first or to keep as a pet first? Which netizen would travel back in time to find out? But I think eating cat meat was not the original purpose behind primitive humans domesticating cats, or perhaps they found it to be too uneconomical to do so. It is well known that cats chase mice, and it is also well known that cats like to eat fish (cats have a fondness for fish). In childhood (before the reform and opening up), China was still in an era dominated by local economies; many products were produced and sold locally, which made them cheap. However, as relatively expensive items, they were still out of reach for the average person. I remember that sea crabs in my hometown were extremely cheap. Raw fish (when there was no oxygen supply available) cost only two or three cents per pound (or even less; I remember that after the reform and opening up, by the sea in Beidaihe, you could buy fresh fish and have it cooked for you at just 6 cents per pound). A common sight on trains traveling from Qinhuangdao to Beijing, Tianjin, and Shijiazhuang during the summer is the open windows of the green-colored trains, with cooked crabs hanging inside them. Of course, our family still can’t afford it. But my uncle’s family can afford it, and our family’s cat can have it. Actually, it’s not a good thing to have relatives who are better off than your own family. At least their family can afford good things, while your family can’t; you can only be envious. Besides, I also have a maternal aunt who is not human (I don’t want to use the word jiuma). I’m almost 80 now, and I still often experience from her what it means when a ‘bad person gets old’. My uncle is educated, holds an official position, and is wealthy (he’s also a good uncle; it’s just that he doesn’t have a good wife). So, fellow men, when looking for a wife, you can’t just focus on beauty. It will bring destruction to your family, causing it to lose its descendants), so your uncle’s family has enough money to buy large prawns, hairtail fish, big crabs, large apples, and big pears to eat, as well as new clothes to wear during the New Year. Back then, only locals ate crabs, and this continued until summer, when the eggs in the female crabs turned into seeds that appeared outside the shell, forming a large amount of them (I think it was several ounces). Let me tell you that in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, only male rock crabs, king crabs, snow crabs, and Vancouver island crabs (treasure crabs, large meat crabs) can be eaten. Can we Chinese do it? So, my aunt dried up piles of crab roe to keep for use in other seasons. Our cat, which caused the problem, had its fill on someone else’s lid (a kitchen utensil made of straw). Of course, after a while, that aunt came to her niece’s house to demand an explanation. My honest, kind-hearted, but weak mother could only keep apologizing; I can’t remember exactly what compensation she gave her. It might have been a pair of little rabbits that I raised with care (I kept forty or fifty of them in order to make money, so my affection for them wasn’t that deep), or some chicks raised by my mother (chicklings are very cute in the summer). It’s a special holiday, emotions are unstable; I’ve strayed a bit from the topic. However, I was deeply impressed by the cat stealing food. May I ask: why do cats like to catch mice and can’t resist stealing food?