I don’t get it.
My dog Riley comes when I call, he does tricks on command, and basically lives to please
me.
He’s a good boy!
My cat Olive pretty much ignores me … unless I’m spooning tuna into her bowl or she decides
it’s time for me to pet her.
(Is that the right spot, your highness?)
Basically, I’m here for her.
I love her, but I’m not in control.
So, I was surprised to learn that not only did we domesticate cats over 10,000 years
ago—we did it twice!
I can’t even get my cat to do something once!
How did we convince these finicky felines to move in?
We didn’t.
It was probably their idea.
Even though cats are domesticated animals—coming from the Latin word “Dom” for home and
meaning that the animal began living with, and then became dependent on, us— it’s
more accurate to say that cats domesticated themselves.
And, sorry cat-lovers, but cats weren’t the first animals to do so.
That honor goes to the dogs.
Dogs—or their wolfy ancestors—fell in love with us the moment we started the whole
hunting and cooking over fire thing.
They scavenged.
They ate our garbage and begged for our scraps.
(Mine still does!
OK, Riley, here you go.)
Dogs let us train them to help us with things like hunting, and even managing herds of other
domesticated animals, like sheep.
Cats, of all kinds, were lurking around those same camp fires, but they had no interest
in helping us hunt or herd, and—if we tried—our attempts to train them failed.
Although larger cats shared our taste for things like rabbits, we didn’t need an animal
whose main skill is stretching in the sun and lounging around the cave in really cool
shapes… until the revolution!
I’m not talking about French Cake or Tea Parties, I mean the Agricultural revolution.
We started planting edible food, like grain.
And when we got good enough leave something over after harvest, we started storing it.
At which point, you could say, we domesticated rats and mice.
No one does say that, though, because, although mice did move in with us—and did become
dependent on us—we couldn’t stand them!
It’s not that they weren’t cute, but they were really bad roommates.
They ate all our grain, left a mess, and brought disease.
(Plus, those bald tails freaked our ancestors out.)
What to do?
Chasing mice is futile and they’re really hard to catch.
That’s when history’s very first crazy Uncle Alex started trying to build a better
mousetrap…
And that’s when cats found their niche in the human world.
Cats love mice!
They can’t get enough of them!
Which explains a lot about our relationship with cats.
We might not agree on everything—like if the cat needs to go out—then in—then out—but—then
in—we get along.
Because no Uncle Alex can build a better mousetrap than a cat.
Wherever people stored grain, rats and mice moved in, and then cats showed up to catch
them.
It wasn’t long before people started encouraging the kitties to stay.
Maybe not offering them the best spot in front of the fire, but….
letting them take it.
(Ever try to argue with a cat?)
And maybe even building them a temple or two.
If you still have doubts over who’s serving whom, consider this: the Egyptians worshipped
a cat deity, Bastet.
So, you tell me who has the power on the cat/human continuum.
And while the Romans didn’t bow before kitties, they did use cats as a symbol of liberty.
In other words, you may be your dog’s master, but your cat is a freelancer.
That’s not the only difference.
Dogs—like pugs, dachshunds or poodles—have morphed so far away from their wolfy ancestors;
it can be hard to believe they’re related.
But compare a tabby cat, or Felis Catus, to her ancestor, Felis Sylvestris, also called
the African Wild Cat or “Middle Eastern Wildcat.”
OK, people who study these things will tell you that today’s housecats look really different
from Felis Sylvestris, but I disagree.
Yes, they are a little smaller and a lot friendlier.
But the supposedly big difference that gets cat-scientists all excited is in the stripes—which
to me look remarkably… the same.
OK, I’ll admit it.
I mix up my plaids and mismatch my argyle socks, and I’m no scientist, but to me,
the most striking thing about tabby cats and their ancestors is how much they look alike!
In fact, this “alikeness” accounts for why we know so little about the early interactions
of cats and people.
Today’s housecats share an almost identical genetic make-up with their wild ancestor—and
one of the few ways to tell them apart is by the markings on their coats, which generally
don’t last long enough to be dug up in an archeological site.
Today’s cats come in different colors, like orange and black and white, some even have
patches.
But one type of marking you won’t see in your house cat—except two occasions I’ll
tell you about later—is leopard spots.
And the variations we do have didn’t come about until breeders began intentionally developing
them in the 1800’s.
Before that, they pretty much left cats alone.
Dogs were already long differentiated into recognizable breeds, because over the years,
we bred them to do specific jobs: fighting bulldogs, herding shepherds, and sledding
huskies.
(Get off that sled, Huskie, I meant sled-pulling, not sled riding.)
But cats were already Purr-fect at their one and only chosen profession, catching mice!
Except, maybe, to get polka dots!
Every house cat today is a Felis Catus and Felis Catus is not related to any leopard.
So, dot hungry breeders have crossed Felis Catus with other species to get spotted offspring…
with varying degrees of success.
The Savannah Ocicat and Bengal are two examples.
There’s debate over whether these make good pets.
They’re not legal everywhere.
And… they might not be happy in your home.
I recommend sticking with Felis Catus, available wherever you see the “free kittens” sign.
Or like Olive did, show up at your house unannounced and refuse to leave, which is how she adopted
me.
But there was a time when dotted kitties chose to live with us.
Remember, cats self-domesticated.
So, it makes sense that wherever we grew grain and got mice, we’d get lucky: kitties would
move in.
Until recently, scientists believed that those kitties were always Felis Catus.
But —
Recent excavations in the early farming village Quanhucun, in central China, show that 5,000
years ago, Chinese farmers enjoyed the company of Quanhucun cats.
Unlike Felis Catus, these guys were descended from “Leopard Cats” (like the genetically
engineered Bengals.)
So they had spots!
Cool!
Now, while the Chinese didn’t go as far as worshiping any Cat deities, evidence dug
up on the site shows that they cared for these dotted felines.
While the cats clearly ate grain-feeding rodents, the farmers fed them as well.
Archeologists even found one Quanhucun Cat so carefully buried that its skeleton remained
intact for thousands of years, proving that someone thought it was pretty special.
So, what happened to the Quanhucun cats?
No one really knows.
(Cats have always been mysterious.)
Some people think that when those farmers started trading, they learned about Felis
Catus and kicked out the Quanhucun kitties in favor of today’s tabby.
Maybe stripes were in style.
But, if you’ve ever heard the century old folk song, “The Cat Came Back” you know
that getting rid of a cat isn’t that easy.
However, sometimes a cat will decide for herself to trade a roof for the open sky.
That’s called going “feral,” and you can find feral cats living outdoors in many
human communities.
I’m inclined to agree with the scientists who think that, for reasons of their own,
Quanhucun cats de-domesticated themselves.
Which just means they went feral and then…
Took it a step further all the way to “wild.”
Today, cats are the most popular pets in the world.
People in the U.S. alone love nearly 75 million of them!
And these pet-able pest-controllers think we’re the cat’s meow— they choose to
be with us: Well, I am so flattered!
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