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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."
【F3】
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答案可能是因为猫对人类的驯养有着天生的趋向，以及它们天生让人想要宠爱的魅力——即日本人所谓的“卡哇伊”。
解析 ①此句是对上一句“why”的回答，主句是主系表结构，because of引导表原因的介词短语作句子的表语。②cat’s innate predisposition to tameness和its inherent pet-charm为because of引出的并列名词短语。③what the Japanese would call kawaii为what引导的名词性从句，对破折号前的pet-charm进行解释说明。④pet-charm中的pet本意为“宠物”，是名词，用连字符与charm组成合成词，表示具有宠物的魅力。⑤kawaii为日语，汉语中常用“卡哇伊”表达，形容很可爱的样子。
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