RE: Re: "First Alynx" and other TR questions.

From: Gareth Martin <gamartin_at_...>
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 14:23:09 -0000

> It can easily be female. My take on the Shadowcats is that
> their social
> patters resemble those of the orlanthi they live with. Propably the
> first Shadowcat can be of either gender. (btw I don't mean
> that only the
> males would hunt, or any such sillyness)

One argument for how humans domesticated the dog is that wolves more or less decided we were easy pickings and moved in to our stone-age hearths. There's not a lot you can do with a bloody great wolf hanging about the place, but they like the heat and the scraps. Over time, the wolves and humans develop a symbiotic realtionship exploiting humans ability to construct useful envirnments and wolfy assets like good sense of smell and intruder detection. The key with this idea is that it is not a deliberate process initiated by humans, but an accidental process initiated by the wolves.

I can't defend this theory to any great depth, but I like it. Theres a possibility that something similar opccurs with the alynx, and that an alynx "pride" does not consider itself to have a home of one tula or stead, but a territory comprising several tulas or steads, which they roam about in. As long as they kick up a stink when intruders appear, kill rodents and don't make trouble, the Orlanthi would probably have been happy to have them as co-habitants. You might have a Top Cat running each such territory, migrating between locations at whim. Anyway, my 2p.

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