Not all cats are cute. We know that. My cat companion, Charlie, is not cute. He’s pretty handsome and he photographs well but you could not describe him as being cute. Bengal cats, if they are adult cats, are not cute. There are more attractive or beautiful, sometimes majestic but not cute. Some cat breeds have an inbuilt cuteness or are more likely to be described as cute. These are cats with large round eyes set within a round head.

The modern Siamese cat is not cute. The modern Siamese cat is too slender or even too skinny to be cute. You could describe the modern Siamese cat as elegant if you prefer that sort of appearance, but not cute. The Scottish Fold tends more towards cuteness because of the round head without the profile of the users.
Pretty well all adult feral cats are not really cute. A lot of people will describe adult feral cats is ugly or moth-eaten or diseased and unhappy or miserable or any other negative adjective that you could use to describe a feral cat but they are quite a long way from being described as cute.
Neither are adult wild cats cute. They are too strong and athletic and potentially dangerous, even the small wild cats. Anyway when not in captivity, you can’t get near enough to a small wild cat as they will run away from you. If a cat runs away from you is difficult to call that individual cat cute.
Everything changes when we talk about kittens. It does not matter whether a kitten has parents who are feral, stray or wild; all of them are cute and some are cuter than others. The cutest have big eyes, plenty of fluffy fur, and round eyes. All kittens have a look of innocence because they are innocent.
Innocence is an essential ingredient of cuteness. Innocence is freshness and vulnerability. Innocence allows an animal to be trusting until they learn that it is not always a good idea to trust another creature. Then that precious innocence gradually disappears.
There is a very great similarity between the characteristics of a cute kitten and a human baby. Perhaps, on occasions, people decide that a cat is cute because they are anthropomorphising the cat. The innocent, fluffy young kitten is pushing the maternal and paternal emotional buttons within the human.
Cuteness is the round headed, wide-eyed, open faced, vulnerable innocence of a baby. Put the baby in a fluffy onesie and you add another layer of cuteness. White and pink or any light colour is more likely to enhance the cuteness factor. Black does the opposite. Therefore a black kitten is less likely to be cute than a white kitten. Black is darkness and darkness is bad and frightening. Darkness is evil. White is light and bright representing purity and goodness.
Fluffiness is cuddliness and cuddly is cute. A fluffy, white traditional Persian kitten is going to be a winner in the race to be the cutest cat. Not all cats are cute.
The human is far more of an animal than most people think. Everything we do is down to animal survival instincts and motivators – a lot of it is subliminal. Reproduction is a major part of our lives.
‘It’s about which genes are the best…&c.’
As for the best genes…just finished reading Dr. Suzanne Sadedin’s essay on AEON (the cyber-mag). The way she describes it, one of the most hearts & flowers time of a woman’s life is furious warfare between host & parasite genes struggling for supremacy.
Howdy Dee –
What sort of varlet would call a feral ‘scruffy?’ Millions of them are beautiful! My poor homely boy was a mass of scars and carbuncles, badly healed fractures, rickets and scurvy from years of abuse. Yes, he was ugly as Berkely Breathed’s ‘Bill the Cat.’ But he was all soul.
And yes, I’m going for it!!! Never mind that I’ve not yet recovered from the ‘handyman’ who took three hours to glue two shingles on my roof. One hour of that time was spent stepping into his safety harness, untangling its knots, threading the straps under his crotch and over his shoulder-blades, buckling and unbuckling, squatting and twisting this way and that. Drove me around the bend to see it. Had to go in the house and lie down.