From what i remember reading, basically how you domesticate an animal is to convince them that they're still babies (and will always be babies for the rest of t

From what i remember reading, basically how you domesticate an animal is to convince them that they're still babies (and will always be babies for the rest of their lives) and that their humans are their mothers. Obviously, an animal is going to love their mother and not run from them or attack them, and you want them to apply that behavior to us. And you do that by breeding neoteny into them. Even as wild as domestic cats can act, they still retain a considerable amount of kitten-like behaviors well into adulthood. You can distinguish someone's pet cat from a feral cat largely because the pet cat still acts like a kitten. A hyperactive, playful kitten with sharp implements of death who treats small animals as their toys to play with until dead, but still a kitten.