• gregorum
    link
    fedilink
    English
    5
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    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.

    • Chill Dude 69OP
      link
      fedilink
      48 months ago

      Yeah. But humans and cats do. A little nuclear war and political rearranging won’t make anyone willing to give up cats.

      • gregorum
        link
        fedilink
        English
        48 months ago

        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”.

        • Chill Dude 69OP
          link
          fedilink
          38 months ago

          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.

          • gregorum
            link
            fedilink
            English
            48 months ago

            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.

            • Chill Dude 69OP
              link
              fedilink
              2
              edit-2
              8 months ago

              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.

              • gregorum
                link
                fedilink
                English
                2
                edit-2
                8 months ago

                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.

                • Chill Dude 69OP
                  link
                  fedilink
                  28 months ago

                  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.

                  • gregorum
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    18 months ago

                    and, in the end, Barclay lived on Earth-- with a cat of his own.