I occasionally come on photos and videos of people with “pet” owls or owl cafes.
Owls are beautiful and soft, but they aren’t meant to be around us being cuddled or whatever. What is cuddling to us causes anxiety to them. It isn’t owl behavior. They tolerate it sort of if they are imprinted, but it makes them more underdeveloped and under equipped to be themselves than it does to make them good company.
Handling birds of prey, a person will get nipped or cut, but these hands are seriously grabbed up and cut, yet in the video clip they still have the owl restrained and continue “playing” with it.
If this hand is any sign of how happy the owls are here, I feel bad for them. If they don’t like their handler touching them, I can only imagine how upset they are being touched by strangers all day.
Dogs, cats, and farm type animals have been domesticated and are used to humans to a decent extent. Most animals though will never be domesticated. They want and need to be free.
It feels like a relatively recent thing that people treat animals like they are independent creatures with agency of their own.
Also like you mentioned, the animals we are personally familiar with are largely domesticated ones, and we’re less and less familiar with animals in their natural states.
It sounds like you have a great understanding though. My cats definitely had times they wanted to be alone, so it’s good you provide that for yours. They’re more than capable of finding us again when they feel like having company.