Hands

Ah... these humans, they call themselves. Homeworld: Earth. Somewhere in the middle of fuckin' nowhere, surrounded by nothing... at least a thousand lightyears away from the nearest intelligent lifeform part of the Galactic Alliance. Maybe they'd find those Feroez tribes before they even got to us, but the Feroez were not intelligent. Quite the opposite actually, maybe they even evolved to be as dumb as possible. Big birds with wings that could fly, but were just too stupid to figure it out.

We had no desire to help either of those two races that were way too far away to be worth the effort.
They'd get here eventually. Maybe it takes them a while but, we have time, and so do they... unless they blow themselves up or something.

But those humans, when they did get here nearly five millennia after we first discovered them... man did they provide something unusual to the alliance. First of all, we noticed they did find the Feroez... and were riding, no flying them. Using them to get around in their worldships. Didn't take us long to figure out how they did that.
Anyway, back on topic:

Admittedly, they provide us with something that gives us extreme pleasure. Okay not as much as procreation, obviously, but still... lots and lots of fun when they're around.

It's those damn hands of theirs. Two "arms" with five smaller appendages called fingers. And they have such dexterity with them. And when they run them through our fur... man... nothing feels better. For some reason they didn't even know we were intelligent. They just saw lots of "cute pets" (their words) on spaceships and figured that whatever the masters were, loved having "pets".

I'm afraid that in just a mere century, they may have even become the most loved race around here, despite their initial awkward reaction to us being "cute pets"

Turns out, these humans can, with some training, tame even the worst and most vile creatures on that damn deathworld of theirs.... by petting them. Same as they did with us. And sure it's dangerous when they started petting bears and tigers and such... but eventually all those creatures succumbed to the pleasure of being petted.
First wolves, which they domesticated into obedient dogs... then later, in an effort to counter the dwindling tiger population, they started raising tigers as pets. And they had tiny tigers; "cats", long before that as well.

I hate to admit it, but they domesticated us as well. A proud race... and most of us are now nothing more than pets to these newcomers. And we willingly submit to that. Just for being petted. It's crazy.
I'm sure there is something psychological here. Maybe they have brain-altering chemicals in their fingertips. Anyway, I'm not getting near a human from now on. The temptation is there, of course, but I want to stay true to myself, and not be a slave to their hands.