[extropy-chat] Copycat Copycat

[spike]

< "It's morally problematic and a little reprehensible," said David Magnus, 
co-director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford. "For $50,000, 
she could have provided homes for a lot of strays." Animals rights activists
complain that new feline production systems aren't needed because thousands
of stray cats are euthanized each year for want of homes. > 



When in college my sweetheart and I were hiking some distance
from civilization when an apparently-abandoned half starved 
young cat ran up to us and began attempting to devour us.  
Neither of us being cat people, we tried to shoo it away, but 
the poor kitten decided we were its last chance of survival, 
which we most likely were.  

We ended up taking him home and feeding the famished beast.  
In its own simplified cat way, it came to the conclusion:
people = food, no people = no food, people = good.
That cat would always attempt to be in physical contact with
a person, any person, at all times if at all possible.  I lived 
in a frat house, there were always guys hanging around, so
the cat always had someone to touch.  If one allowed him
to do so, the cat would leap upon one's shoulders and attempt
to lie across one's neck, with legs hanging in front like
a feather boa.  If one did not physically remove the pestiferous
creature, he would stay that way, even falling asleep draped 
over one's neck.  Oddest thing you ever saw.

If we had had him cloned, surely the genetically identical
offspring would not take up these evidently starvation-induced 
endearing behaviors.

spike