Halloween is sadly upon us 😒😎. This holiday season does lead to some cat abuse because of the link between black cats and Halloween. It is an unpleasant association at heart because it harks back to Medieval times and the … continue reading…
Here are 20 facts about the spread of the domestic cat around the world during the first era of the domestication of the cat. Introduction: it is generally agreed nowadays that the first ‘domestic cats’ appeared in the Middle East … continue reading…
Here are 16 succinctly summarised facts about the ancestors of today’s cat. It is all about evolution over eons. Today’s domestic cat is a marvel of this evolutionary process which has taken tens of millions of years. All predator animals … continue reading…
It’s a point worth making. You hear a lot about the first domestic cats coming into being about 10,000 years ago. These are the first N. African wildcats who befriended humans and vice versa; both benefiting in an act of … continue reading…
No, I’m not referring to domestic cats would like to open refrigerator doors and creep inside to either ‘steal’ the food for have a snooze, I’m referring to a special race of domestic cat living in sub-zero temperatures in industrial-sized … continue reading…
The question is asking for information about the world’s very first domestic cat. We don’t have that information. We have a rough idea when the North African wildcat was first domesticated but that is about it. The domestic cat’s skeleton … continue reading…
Eighty-five million years ago, Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand separated from the major land mass called Gondwanaland. About 200 million years ago Australia was attached to Antarctica. 85 million years ago was well before the beginnings of the evolution … continue reading…
Researchers have decided that cats evolved from a fierce saber-toothed predator that occupied North America 42 million years ago. They also decided that this “new species” was among one of the first mammals to be an obligate carnivore. At this … continue reading…
On my reckoning, there are only 10 countries where the domestic cat is a native species or a non-invasive species. In all the other countries of the world the domestic cat could be described as an invasive species. So, what … continue reading…
Introduction – the relationship between Ancient Egyptians and domestic and wildcats was not as rosy as you think Cats in ancient Egypt were used for the benefit of people despite being worshipped, and despite the idea that they were treated … continue reading…
The illustration comes from The History of Reynard the Fox. In this 15th century woodcut, we see Tybert the Cat castrating a village priest. Incidentally, “Tybert” is spelled in two other ways, namely ‘Tibert’ and ‘Tybalt’. Unusually, there is absolutely … continue reading…
In a famous Indian fable in the Panchatantra, an ancient collection of animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose from 200 BCE-300CE, the domestic cat is portrayed as sly, underhand and hypocritical. The fable which I describe below is immortalised … continue reading…
When people move home, they take their cat companion. This has been going on for thousands of years. It is how the domestic cat has spread throughout the world. For example, the Romans did quite a bit of empire building … continue reading…
This post is specifically about the evolution of the domestic cat since domestication. I do not address the evolution of the wildcat pre-domestication. It’s fairly well-known and currently accepted that the first domestic cats on the planet existed around 10,000 … continue reading…
It is sad and telling of modern life that the famous place where the first wildcats were domesticated by farmers, the Fertile Crescent, which encompasses Syria and the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, is now a place where there are no … continue reading…
