The history of the domestic cat

Some of the earliest evidence of the domestic car are to be found in Ancient Egypt, where it was worshipped as a god, and where the penalty for killing a cat was death. Cats were buried with the ceremony befitting a pharaoh and it was common to mummify not just kings, but cats too. It is from these mummified felines that we have been able to learn much about the early domesticates cat. The British Museum in London holds booty from the raids carried out on pyramids at the turn of the century, including many mummified cats. When the bandages where removed, the cats were all found to be quite similar: small short-haired cats with brownish ‘ticked’ coats, rather similar to the breed we now call the Abyssinian. Once worshipped as gods, the tide changes for the cat during the Middle Ages, when it was considered to be a witch’s ‘familiar’. Both witch and cat suffered the same fate, and where burned to death. The black cat crossing your path is supposed to be a bad omen, although some people in contrast consider a black cat to be a lucky mascot – wires have certainly got crossed somewhere along the line. In Burma and Thailand, cats have always been held in high esteem. Breeds that we know today as Burmese, Siamese and Korat owe their ancestry to these far-off parts of the world. The Siamese was known as the “Royal” Cat of Siam, and only royalty where allowed to own such a cat. It was considered an honour to be given one, and they where usually only bestowed on visiting dignitaries from other countries who had won favour with the king. Perhaps because of the limited gene pool available in such remote regions these cats often had deformed tails. Similar inbreeding was seen in Japan; isolated on an island, the indigenous cat population did not have the chance to mate with unrelated cats and so any fault in the genetic make-up would have been doubled up with each generation. This gave rise to the breed we now call the Japanese Bobtail. As ships became larger, and were able to travel farther afield, this changed the cat’s future. Cats were good mousers and most ships employed the services of a “ship’s cat”. Cats have always been excellent escapologists and it was not unknown for one to jump ship, witch meant that the ship would then have to pick up a local cat as a replacement, and bring it back home. Off the west coast of England, near the port of Liverpool, is the Isle of Man, a small island which is home to a tail-less variety of cat known as the Manx. It is thought that these tail-less cats first came to the island on ships from the Far East; stormy weather sometimes caused the ships to stop at the Isle of Man as they where unable to get into Liverpool, and it is quite likely that the occasional cat jumped ship here. As the island had little trading or contact with the mainland, these cat where free to breed only with each other and so the tail-less factor was increased. Even today, most cats on Man are tail-less. Although they do produce the occasional tailed kitten.

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