The Origins of our feline friend
Cats and dogs an important, loving part of many families. Cats come in only second to dogs in popularity as a family pets. But of course, cats didn’t start as the domesticated household animal we know today.
The origin of cats has been speculate
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The origin of cats has been speculated about for some years, but many scientists believe that the original forefather of cats was a weasel like animal called Miacis, which lived on earth about 40 million or 50 million years ago.
Actually, Miacis is may be the common ancestor of all carnivores, both cats and dogs. But even with the shared root, cats were on earth before dogs – in fact, millions of years before the first dogs. The first cat is believed to be the prehistoric cat Smilodon, the saber-toothed cat sometimes called a tiger.
It was difficult to domesticate cats. Cats had a strong hunting intuition which didn’t easily become co-operative instincts. Initially, cats took their hunting instincts into the home, attacking small, defenseless beings, even
small babies. Africa and southeastern Asia were the first areas to domesticate cats.
Initially, cats were sought after for many reasons, none of which were decorative. Cats were domesticated primarily for their hunting skills, to control vermin (rats and mice) in the home and granaries (grain storage containers).
Cats first became an integral part of the Egyptians culture. The Egyptians not only accepted cats into their home, but even revered cats. The Egyptians used cats to hunt fish and birds, as well as keep the vermin populations under control. But the cats quickly became an important part of Egypt’s religion. An branch of the traditional
religion developed in which the foundation of the religious believes was a worship of cats. The cat goddess Bastet (also sometimes called Bast of Pasht) was made into an icon with a figurine of a head of a cat. Cats were sacred animals to the Egyptians; the cat was well cared and central figure in the family home; when the cat died, its
body was mummified and buried in a special cemetery. One cemetery found in an archeological dig in the 1800s contained the preserved bodies of more than 300,000 cats.
The Egyptian cat is the father of many of our modern day breeds of cat. While the Egyptians enforced strict laws prohibiting the exportation of their sacred cats, other cultures quickly realized the cat’s rat-catching prowess. Cats were soon secreted out of Egypt and brought
to Greece and Rome, among other parts of Europe. At around the same time period, domestic cats were brought into India, China, and Japan where they served as pets as well as rat and mouse catchers.
Overtime, cats have changed in appearance and certain breeds were bred for ideal physical characteristics: eye color, hair length, marking patterns, etc. All of the many varieties of cat can trace their ancestors to the wild, even if they are mostly used in homes as a cuddly, loving pet today.
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