Having a cat also signals that you will take on caring for another being even though it is not in your financial best interest. But when you live in a condo with no backyard, or some other city dwelling like that, a cat makes far more sense, and doesn't require the ridiculous amount of maintenance that a dog does.
Why childless American women who explicitly don't want children aren't attracted to men who like cats, I have no idea. It's not like this in other countries; this is mostly an American phenomenon.
>But when you live in a condo with no backyard, or some other city dwelling like that, a cat makes far more sense, and doesn't require the ridiculous amount of maintenance that a dog does.
That's exactly what I'm saying. The dog is conspicuous consumption. It's signaling that you are willing to burn resources (time in particular) in a similar manner you would on a child. The lizard brain eats that shit up and the human brain is none the wiser. As a byproduct of being far more practical in terms of time/money resources the cat does not broadcast that signal. Nobody is saying the cat is not more practical. That's a given.
You seem to be implying that it's biological. It's not, it's entirely cultural. Non-American women (unless they're highly Americanized) aren't like this at all. Chinese women aren't really big on pets, because people there don't have indoor pets very much. Also, black American women don't have dogs (or cats) very much at all. This is a cultural thing, and so I don't see how you can claim it's some kind of innate biological thing, unless you're going to claim that white American women are biologically different from everyone else in the world.
The lizard brain likes seeing conspicuous consumption (indication of wealth/status) and signs that you are possibly ok pissing away resources on a kid. Having a pet dog is the way we Americans prefer to signal that. The interface is biological. The implementation is cultural.
Why childless American women who explicitly don't want children aren't attracted to men who like cats, I have no idea. It's not like this in other countries; this is mostly an American phenomenon.