First pet cats were tamed wildcats not true domestic cats

Ancient tabby cat

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 ‘commensalism’ as it is called. These early pet cats were tamed wildcats. Their behaviour …

Read more

Mars State of Pet Homelessness Index – measuring success and failure in pet domestication

Stray cat and dog fed the same food

Mars Petcare have created a useful and interesting index which pulls together information about homeless cats and dogs in 9 countries. They used more than 200 global and local sources. They researched attitudes towards cat and dog ownership. Germany comes out on top while India is bottom. The index provides a score as to …

Read more

Test that your cat is fully domesticated when interacting with you

Human hand and cat

Introduction: this test requires that the cat’s owner has never used their hand as a toy for their cat. If that has happened, their cat will instinctively want to attack it. I am referring to a test to assess cat domestication in interactions with their owner. I accept that all domestic cats have a …

Read more

Sad “Big Red” a special ginger tabby feral cat who decided to be domesticated

Big Red

Big Red is a special ginger tabby feral cat, found in St George, Utah, USA, and rescued; and once rescued he decided to be domesticated and feel the warmth, both physical and emotional, of having a human caregiver look after him. I guess he had had enough of being a feral cat, struggling to …

Read more

Place where farmers first domesticated the cat is now desert and there are no farmers

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 farmers tilling the fields because the river, which was once swollen with floodwaters, has …

Read more

Chinese mountain cat is a subspecies and is not the ancestor of domestic cats in China

Chinese Mountain cat

I am picking up on a study that I have written about before which genetically analysed the Chinese mountain cat to confirm (1) that it is a subspecies of wildcat and not species in its own right and (2) that it was not domesticated at the time the African wildcat was domesticated about 10,000 …

Read more

Why are domestic cats an invasive species?

The Fertile Crescent where the domestic cat first occurred compared to a map of the same are 2021

Domestic cats are not an invasive species in every country. Domestic cats are native to certain countries and in those countries they are not an invasive species. A species of animal is only “invasive” if they are not native or indigenous to a certain place. For cats this means that they were brought to …

Read more

follow it link and logo