Tolerated Guests: quem domesticou quem (C1)
It is fashionable to say that we domesticated the cat. The evidence suggests something more embarrassing: the cat noticed that agriculture produced mice, that mice gathered where grain was stored, and that humans, conveniently, stored grain. Nothing was surrendered. The animal that sleeps on your keyboard has the same skull, the same appetites and roughly the same opinion of you as its ancestors had of the first farmers. We flatter ourselves with the word pet, which implies ownership, and then spend our evenings performing for a creature that has never once agreed to the arrangement in writing. This is not a complaint. There is something bracing about sharing a house with an animal that withholds. Dogs confirm us; they were bred to. The cat offers a rarer service — it reminds us that affection given without obligation is worth more than affection engineered, and that we are, in at least one room of our own home, merely tolerated guests with opposable thumbs.
Fonte: English for ALL (texto original).
O emprego da expressão "has never once agreed to the arrangement in writing" produz efeito de sentido ao
- A) sugerir que a domesticação do gato foi historicamente formalizada por acordos comerciais entre criadores, dos quais o animal foi excluído.
- B) transpor para a relação com o animal um vocabulário contratual, expondo o descompasso entre o discurso humano de posse e a autonomia efetiva do gato.
- C) acusar os donos de sentimentalismo ingênuo, atribuindo ao gato intenções calculistas que nenhuma evidência biológica confirmaria.
- D) reforçar a ideia de que a convivência com gatos é juridicamente frágil, pois não há regras claras sobre a posse desses animais.
- E) ironizar a linguagem científica, que trataria a domesticação como processo negociado quando ela foi, de fato, imposta pela espécie humana.