I’m no expert (full disclosure, I’m not even at all knowledgeable) on ths subject, but don’t those cats look as if they’d been previously domesticated?
I don’t mean the kitties in the pic, specifically, I mean the breed. I wonder if they’re feral descendents of pets from a not too terribly long ago collapsed polity in that AO.
The origin of domesticated cats is disputed and nebulous, AFAIK. The possibility exists that they’ve been making human life possible for so long that their wild kin went extinct without a non-cat species to take care of. :’) Otherwise, their genes probably will tell the tale.