Yeah, fair enough. But there were still a bunch of humans on that dirt-farming planet, right? I guess maybe they weren’t allowed to have cats, for some reason. But I dunno. I know what would happen in the United States right now, if someone tried to ban cats. It would get real ugly, real fast, for whoever tried to pull that shit.
So I still say, if Worf hung out with humans for any chunk of time, he should have seen cats. Or at least, like, a shitload of vintage cat memes and videos. Those would still be going around on all the Earth communications networks, for sure. It’s a huge part of human culture.
fwiw: the United States also doesn’t exist when Worf was growing up. that country (like many others) ceased to exist during/after WWIII.
anyway, that’s not to say Worf had never seen a cat, but that doesn’t mean he’d ever interacted with one or had any familiarity with them. I’ve known humans today who are completely clueless about them.
sure, but like i said, Worf didn’t really live on Earth that long, and there may not really be that many cats living off-world. Even still, since Klingons mostly see pets as food, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for Worf to have grown up getting too familiar with them, especially while struggling with his “warrior identity”.
Not to keep arguing, but he understood that pet targs were a thing. Although, now that I think about it, I don’t know if they eventually eat those, too.
Yeah, I guess so. I was wondering how long a pet targ might be kept, and now I recall that Martok said he’d had his old targ “since [he] was a boy,” up until the point when his wife was moving into his house, and deliberately let him wander out into the woods, or whatever.
So I guess the Klingons who do have pet targs are definitely keeping them as full pets, and not some weird halfway situation, where they’re a pet until they get fat enough to eat.
from what we see across all of Trek, pet ownership, in general, simply doesn’t seem as popular as it is today. perhaps it went out of fashion and is an eccentricity practiced by the few. perhaps it’s simply a biased reflection we experience due to the fact that we mostly only see space-born folx and toting around another living thing with you while trekking across the stars is a terrible inconvenience best avoided. that might explain why the only time we see people with pets, they’re almost always a senior staff member/officer with a long-term posting. or some civilian living in a house on a planet.
remember, Riker was first tasked with watching Spot for Data, and he couldn’t handle it at all- and he was 100% human who grew up on Earth. Geordi flat-out refused to even try looking after Spot.
You make some excellent points. I mean, who was the one person who instantly got along with Spot and had zero problems catsitting? Fuckin’ Barclay. Broccoli himself. The weirdest motherfucker in space.
Yeah, fair enough. But there were still a bunch of humans on that dirt-farming planet, right? I guess maybe they weren’t allowed to have cats, for some reason. But I dunno. I know what would happen in the United States right now, if someone tried to ban cats. It would get real ugly, real fast, for whoever tried to pull that shit.
So I still say, if Worf hung out with humans for any chunk of time, he should have seen cats. Or at least, like, a shitload of vintage cat memes and videos. Those would still be going around on all the Earth communications networks, for sure. It’s a huge part of human culture.
You can’t just bring cats to random planets, they’re invasive.
Gault has very restrictive interplanetary customs laws protecting songbirds and people with cat allergies.
Gault outsources their songbird protection to these guys so you really don’t want to fuck around importing a feline species:
fwiw: the United States also doesn’t exist when Worf was growing up. that country (like many others) ceased to exist during/after WWIII.
anyway, that’s not to say Worf had never seen a cat, but that doesn’t mean he’d ever interacted with one or had any familiarity with them. I’ve known humans today who are completely clueless about them.
Yeah. But humans and cats do. A little nuclear war and political rearranging won’t make anyone willing to give up cats.
sure, but like i said, Worf didn’t really live on Earth that long, and there may not really be that many cats living off-world. Even still, since Klingons mostly see pets as food, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for Worf to have grown up getting too familiar with them, especially while struggling with his “warrior identity”.
Not to keep arguing, but he understood that pet targs were a thing. Although, now that I think about it, I don’t know if they eventually eat those, too.
Klingons regularly eat targ. Keeping them as pets is like humans keeping a pig as a pet. Some people do it, but it’s uncommon.
Yeah, I guess so. I was wondering how long a pet targ might be kept, and now I recall that Martok said he’d had his old targ “since [he] was a boy,” up until the point when his wife was moving into his house, and deliberately let him wander out into the woods, or whatever.
So I guess the Klingons who do have pet targs are definitely keeping them as full pets, and not some weird halfway situation, where they’re a pet until they get fat enough to eat.
from what we see across all of Trek, pet ownership, in general, simply doesn’t seem as popular as it is today. perhaps it went out of fashion and is an eccentricity practiced by the few. perhaps it’s simply a biased reflection we experience due to the fact that we mostly only see space-born folx and toting around another living thing with you while trekking across the stars is a terrible inconvenience best avoided. that might explain why the only time we see people with pets, they’re almost always a senior staff member/officer with a long-term posting. or some civilian living in a house on a planet.
remember, Riker was first tasked with watching Spot for Data, and he couldn’t handle it at all- and he was 100% human who grew up on Earth. Geordi flat-out refused to even try looking after Spot.
You make some excellent points. I mean, who was the one person who instantly got along with Spot and had zero problems catsitting? Fuckin’ Barclay. Broccoli himself. The weirdest motherfucker in space.