User:RM395/Course/Edit wars/Cat

Challenge!

What is a cat, really? Is it a friend, some sort of therapeutic device, a living piece of furniture? The question in this very long and hotly debated edit war is the exact wording of how to refer NOT to the domestic cat, but rather to the person who takes care of the cat. The two terms in question were "owner" and "caregiver". In late 2006, this went back and forth with two people fighting hard for the "caregiver" side against, well, pretty much everyone else. The main idea that users Katzenjammer and David Olivier were attempting to get across was that it is not possible to own a cat in the way that one owns a car, couch, etc. David Olivier believes that since not all people agree that a cat can be owned, the term "owner" violates Wikipedia's views on neutrality. Pretty much everyone else agrees that since you pay for a cat, have papers for a cat, etc, that you do, in fact, own the cat, regardless of the care that you provide for it. Which goes to the argument whether you can own people or not. Do you own your child, your spouse? You have papers for those, too. It goes on and on until a mediator comes in and basically tries to put the whole thing on semantics and the fact that neither term quite fits, but the English language does not yet have a word to adequately describe the relationship between cat and human.

In the end, the vast majority wins, and the term "owner" continues to be used. This lengthy argument ends up on Wikipedia's board of the Lamest Edit Wars Ever, which is really just embarrassing.