According to Gary Francione’s abolitionism, we have a moral duty to “phase out” domestic animals through the means of sterilization. The reason for this, he states, is 1) Domestic animals have been bred by us to be the way they are, and this existence is “unnatural” and 2) Domestic animals are so dependent on us that they cannot continue to exist without a deep and inherently problematic power imbalance between them and us. Using the empirical case of cats, this paper attempts to challenge the validity of these two premises. The paper then moves to show that cats also philosophically undermine these implied premises: 3) Preventing domestic animals from breeding through universal sterilization is morally neutral 4) Sterilizing everyone is consistent with respect for autonomy, and 5) There’s a clear line between domestic animals and wild animals. The aim of this paper, ultimately, is to show that it is empirically false that our relationship with cats is marked by an “unnatural” dependency, and, furthermore, that cats challenge the internal consistency of abolitionism and its ability to capture key aspects of human-animal relationships.