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  3. "The cat does not offer services," William Burroughs wrote. "The cat offers itself." But it does so with unapologetic contradict

"The cat does not offer services," William Burroughs wrote. "The cat offers itself." But it does so with unapologetic contradict

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问题    "The cat does not offer services," William Burroughs wrote. "The cat offers itself." But it does so with unapologetic contradictioa Greet a cat enthusiastically and it might respond with nothing more than a few unhurried blinks. Later, as you’re trying to work, it will occupy your lap, keyboard, and attention, making noises all the while. A cat will mew at the food bowl in the morning and set off on a multiple-day trek in the afternoon. 【F1】"Are cats domesticated?" is one of the most frequently Googled questions about the animals, based on the search engine’s autocomplete suggestions.
   It’s a question that scientists have been asking, too. The latest answer, based on insights from recent archeological discoveries and genome-sequencing studies, is that cats are semi-domesticated. 【F2】Whether this affiliation began five or ten millions of years ago, the evidence suggests that cats have not been part of our domestic domain for nearly as long as dogs, which have been our companions for perhaps forty thousand years.
   At first, the cat was yet another opportunistic creature that evolved to take advantage of civilization. It was essentially a larger version of the mice it caught. Somewhere along the line, people shifted from tolerating cats to welcoming them, providing extra food and a warm place to sleep. Why? 【F3】Perhaps it is because of the cat’s innate predisposition to tameness and its inherent pet-charm—what the Japanese would call kawaii.
   Not all researchers agree. "I don’t think it makes sense to talk about animals as semi- or fully domesticated," Greger Larson, an expert on domestication, said. "Any threshold you try to define will necessarily be arbitrary." Larson tends to agree with the views of Melinda Zeder, an archeologist at the Smithsonian Institution. 【F4】Zeder characterized domestication as an ongoing coexistence between humans and another species—"a sort of treaty that ends up being mutually beneficial" she said. This relationship, she argued, can follow many paths and result in somewhat different outcomes, which she has catalogued.
   "Cats are domesticated," Zeder said. 【F5】"But I think what confuses people about cats is that they still carry some of the more remote behaviors of their solitary wild ancestors. Sometimes they don’t give a damn about you, but they are very much part of your niche. Cats have us do everything for them. We clean their litter, stroke them, admire them, but unlike dogs they do not have to constantly please and satisfy our needs. They are probably the ultimate domesticate."
【F4】
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答案泽达尔将“驯化”定义为人类和其他物种之间的一种持续性的共生关系——“类似一份以互利告终的协议，”她说道。
解析 ①本句是复合句。主句中的characterize…as…意为“将……定义为……”。②破折号后的a sort of treaty that．．．是对破折号前an ongoing coexistence between humans and another species的补充说明，以明确其意思；a sort of表示“某种，有点儿”；end up doing sth．意为“以……告终”。③句末的she said可视为插入语，表明引号中的内容是Zeder的原话。
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