Reply #16: Not in human time. Over many thousands of years, maybe,

[MineralMan]

but not in time periods we'd recognize.

Cats are domestic because we make them that way, one at a time. Their nature is that if they live with humans, they adapt to the behaviors humans expect. Humans are their food source. This only really works if you get the cat when it's young, as in between 6-16 weeks of age. The things we do with kittens accustoms them to the things we will do to them as adult cats. Their reward is food and a warm lap and house to live in.

It's very, very difficult to fully domesticate a cat that has lived apart from humans for more than three or four months after being weaned. That early kitten period is critical. Without human handling, few feral cats more than four months old will every behave like a normal domestic cat.

So, the answer is that cats are already wild. We tame them when they are babies and socialized them to behave as we expect them to behave. They're very adaptable when they're kittens. That adaptability simply disappears at a certain age and if not socialized to humans, they behave as wild cats. There are some exceptions, but not many. I have managed, once, to turn a 4 month old feral kitten into an acceptable house cat, but only once, and that cat was still prone to kick your butt if you did something unexpected to it. All other efforts have been failures. I've gotten some other feral cats to be tame enough to come for food and maybe to be touched in some circumstances, but that's it.