Domestic Cats Some 20,000 or so years ago the dog was domesticated. While there is, of course, no way to know the exact mechanism of domestication, the following is a possible, even probable, scenario.
While out hunting, a man comes across a wolf cub. Being not especially vicious, the cub is taken home alive to be eaten later (living food doesn't spoil). The cub, being too young and inexperienced to be afraid, does cub things, which amuses the man and his family, so he lets it live for a while longer.
The cub grows into a wolf and, being a wolf, looks upon the people as its pack. It quickly learns to assist in the hunt, yielding its freshly-caught prey to its human packmaster. Soon, everybody wants a tame wolf to help with the hunting.
Alternately, or in addition, some other animal, perhaps even another wolf, comes around looking for a quick meal of man-cub, and is driven off by the tame wolf, who is, of course, protecting its pack. Soon everybody wants a tame wolf to protect the kids. Its fate is sealed, the tame wolf is now a dog and is forever linked with mankind.
The domestication of the cat was not so easily accomplished as that of the dog, as the cat is not a pack animal and does not have built-in co-operative instincts. The cat was first domesticated some 5000 years ago. This took place in the valley of the Nile, in what is now Sudan but was then Upper Egypt. The actual mechanics of domestication are remarkably simple--in fact, it has recurred many times throughout Africa and southwestern Asia over the millennia.
The people of the area had given up the nomadic lifestyle of their ancestors, learned to till the soil, and settled into agrarian communities. Since these communities depended for their very existence upon their crops, which could only be harvested once or twice a year, a means of storing them between harvests had to be found. Early on, this consisted merely of keeping grain in baskets. This attracted mice, rats, and other vermin, who quickly learned to adapt to man's ways in order to get a free meal. An abundance of vermin attracted the local lesser cat, the African Wildcat, who could also appreciate an easy meal.
It didn't take much observation to see that the vermin ate the grain, which was undesirable, and the cats ate the vermin, which was desirable. People started encouraging the cats to stick around by leaving out the odd fishhead or other scrap, a practice of which the cats were fond. Since they had a ready source of food (mice, rats and fishheads), no threat from the people (nobody chased or yelled at cat, lest it leave and the vermin increase), and an absence of enemies (various cat-eating creatures stayed away because of the men), the cats moved in on a permanent basis.
Being a naturally calm species, the African Wildcat quickly adapted to people, allowing itself to at first be approached, then petted, and eventually to be held. The cat is a passionate animal, and rewarded all that caressing and holding with love and affection in kind.
In addition to demonstrating its love by snuggling and acting endearingly (do not even dogs do so?) a cat purred. Purring is a unique and amazing phenomenon, both in its inception and in the reactions it produces. A farmer could work all day in the fields and come home tired to the bone. The cat would jump onto his lap and proceed to snuggle and purr, which would promptly drive the fatigue out of his soul. We're talking direct massage of the psyche here! Let a cat snuggle and purr before bedtime and you'll sleep twice as deeply.
The cat sleeps in short periods throughout the day, rather than a single long period like people and dogs, and awakens quickly. It is thus ready to do its job around the clock.
It is also especially alert and active at night, when the mice are awake and the dogs are asleep. It often assisted the family dog by alerting it to any strange thing than may go bump in the night. It sees and hears far better than the dog, especially at night, and does get along and co-operate with its canine companion.
Unlike the dog the cat is clean. It buries its wastes outside, away from its den (the people's house), so as not to attract predators or other cats.
All these desirable features and factors have caused the cat to become a permanent member of human society as both a helpmate and companion. The cat is here to stay.
Divine Cats Before too long these ancient Egyptians had progressed from villages into cities, and from a simple nature-oriented pantheism led by the village shaman into a hyper-complex system of gods and goddesses with a set of elaborate rituals carefully governed by a priest class. The kingship secured itself, as has often been done, by claiming a right to rule as ordained by the gods. This divine right of kings eventually gave way to a royal demigodhood, then a full godhood: the king became Pharaoh, the god-king. Since Pharaoh was one of their own, this concept was strongly encouraged by the priests. Egypt had become a firmly entrenched theocracy.
Since the food requirements of a city are much greater than those of a village, grain was confiscated as taxes and stored in the royal granaries. These granaries were simply windowless storage buildings and, like all buildings, were not secure against nature's smaller creatures: our old friends the mice and rats. With all that grain piled in such great heaps, the vermin had a field day and bred like rabbits only wish they could. This became such a problem that Pharaoh needed all the cats he could muster to combat the vermin, so he appropriated all the cats in the land.
Taking people's cats, especially beloved cats, posed a problem that even Pharoah didn't want to face. Being divine himself, presumably with divine wisdom, he solved this problem by leaving all the cats where they were but making them demigods: all the cats in Egypt, all at once. There were suddenly tens of thousands of small, furry, purring divinities running around. As with all of man's lunacies, we feel certain that the cats ignored the whole thing.
Of course, a mere human could not own a demigod, only a god could, and who was the only god around? Our friend, Pharoah, that's who. A human could, though, provide a home and food for a demigod, and this they did, bringing them to their assigned granary each night and picking them up each morning (an ideal job for number three or four son or daughter). As compensation for this service, they would receive a tax credit. (They got to claim their cats as dependents! Makes one wonder how much cat-sharing took place on their version of April 15th!)
Since all cats were the property of divine Pharaoh, to kill or injure one, even by accident, was a capital crime. If a house caught fire, the cats were saved first, then, if there was time, the people. People were, after all, only human.
Whenever a cat died in the normal course of events, the whole of its human household went into elaborate ritualistic mourning, often shaving off their eyebrows, chanting, pounding their breasts, and demonstrating other outward signs of grief at their loss. The body of the cat had to be carefully wrapped in linen and brought to the priests, who would check it carefully to be certain its death was natural. When the priests were done, the body was taken to the embalmers, who made a cat mummy of it. There were far more cat mummies than people mummies in Egypt: over 300,000 of them were found in the diggings at Beni-Hassan alone.
The ritualism and mythology concerning the cat spread far beyond their vermin-control capabilities. The people soon believed (helped, no doubt, by the priests) that the cats had a direct influence upon health, marriage, fortune, and other non-cat aspects of life. The goddess of life and family was Bast, who had a woman's body and a cat's head. In her left hand, Bast was often depicted as holding an amulet of the all-seeing sacred eye, the utchat, believed to have magical powers.
The utchat itself was everywhere in society: as decoration, in home shrines, worn as jewelry, etc. It was often depicted as being the eye of a cat, sometimes with cats within the eye itself. An utchat at the door kept a watchful eye out for thieves and vandals, protecting the home. An utchat over the lintel kept a watchful eye over all who dwelt within, preserving them from disease and accident. An utchat worn around the neck kept its watchful eye upon the road and protected travelers from harm. An utchat showing a mother cat with many kittens given as a wedding present meant many children. The beliefs were legion (so were the utchat makers).
To remove one of the divine cats from Egypt was to steal from Pharaoh, a capital crime. As a result, it took a while before many domesticated cats turned up elsewhere in the Near East.
The exceptions to this were ships' cats: sailors have always been practical people. The Nile bargemen kept cats aboard for the same reason the priests wanted cats at the granaries, to kill the vermin. The bargemen would offload their wares to the Phoenician and other seagoing traders at the mouth of the Nile, sometimes offloading a kitten or three at the same time (for the properly devout consideration, of course). In this manner the domestic cat slowly spread by sea to the various countries bordering the Mediterranean, and thence by overland caravan to the north and east.
In a similar manner, the caravans crossing the strip of desert separating the Nile from the Red Sea often carried cats with them, many of whose kittens somehow found their way to the dhows of the Indus traders. These Indus traders took the cats back to India, where they were traded eastward into Burma and Siam and northward into China.
It wasn't until the Persian, Greek and Roman conquests, however, that Egypt finally openly yielded her most valuable treasure, and the African Wildcat, now changed slightly into an early Domesticated Cat, spread over the Empires of Darius, Alexander and Caesar.
There is some evidence that an independent domestication may have taken place in the valley of the Indus, by similar means to that in Egypt (without the divinity aspects), but as we're still speaking of an offshoot of felis sylvestris, the basic wildcat, it would have merged with the earlier domestication and vanished as a distinct entity as soon as Egyptian cats were spread over the trade routes.
The western world now had housecats, alleycats, working cats, and just-plain cats everywhere. Commerce over the trade routes to china and India soon spread cats in quantity to the rest of the Known World. Cats were off and running.
As a momentary aside, the word for cat in ancient Egypt was "mau," their version of "meow," the universal cat-word. By the time the domesticated cats left Egypt the utchat was completely cat-oriented, often cat-shaped, and irrevocably cat-linked. From the word utchat we get the vast majority of the Indo-European names for the cat: cat, chat, cattus, gatus, gatous, gato, katt, katte, kitte, kitty, etc. Similarly, the cat-goddess Bast was Pasht in later Egyptian (during the times of the ptolemaic kings). From pasht we get the remaining Indo-European names for the cat: pasht, past, pushd, pusst, puss, pussy, etc.
Next
 NetPets® Main Page |  The Cat Center |