The Story of Cats

Cats are perceived as graceful and elegant animals, and are often admired by their owners for their strong sense of individuality and self-assertiveness; quite the opposite of for instance dogs. According to statistics, cats as pets are outnumbered by dogs in the UK, ranked as the third most popular, with approximately 10.3 million individuals. ⁽¹⁾ However, this number is somewhat uncertain, as it does not take into account the numbers of wild or semi-wild cats, as a result of pet dumping. Even so, it is safe to say that cats are one of the world’s most popular pets, with traces of bonds between humans and cats going back at least as far as 4 000 years ⁽²⁾, if not even further – and they are definitely here to stay!

As with most domestic animals, their origin and time of domestication is a mystery; and as for the cat, there are no exceptions. It is most likely that the domestication of cats took place later in time compared to dogs, as dogs probably were used for hunting by nomadic humans. Cats would have been domesticated when humans started settling down, as they were useful for keeping mice away from stored food. ⁽³⁾

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Keeping this in mind, evidence suggests that cats could have been domesticated as early as 10 000 years ago, as this was the period of time when humans settled in the Fertile Crescent region, domesticating wheat and barley for food purposes. ⁽⁴⁾

It is thought that the domesticated cat (Felis catus or Felis silvestris catus) descended from five different species of wild cats; the Sardinian wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica), the European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris), the Central Asian wildcat (Felis silvestris ornata), the subsaharan African wildcat (Felis silvestris cafra) and the Chinese desert cat (Felis silvestris bieti), which are all subspecies of the wild cat, Felis silvestris. ⁽⁴⁾

References

(1)  http://www.dognews.co.uk/uk-domestic-dog-population-is-larger-than-originally-thought-3/

(2)  http://www.catsinfo.com/history.html

(3)  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/brief_cats.html

(4)  http://archaeology.about.com/od/domestications/qt/cat.htm