What affects us affects cats
No one knows when cheetahs were first discovered because there is no record of that unique moment in the history of this much admired wild cat species. This is because it happened so long ago. Cheetahs have been on the planet for far longer than “anatomically modern Homo sapiens1” (modern humans). It is said …
What can I say? I am horrified. But I am not surprised. Sarah Hartwell, the internet’s doyenne of cat fancy history, has a shocking snippet of information regarding the early days of the Ragdoll cat breed tucked away within one of her comprehensive articles. The Ragdoll cat breed history is convoluted and tortous thanks …
Frances Simpson is one of the great triumvirate of the early cat fancy – the time when the breeding and showing of cats started in the world. It happened in the UK. There are three big names of that time, the late 1800s, the other two being Louis Wain and Harrison Weir. Wain is …
Yes, domestic cats are related to tigers. They are also related to all the other wild cat species including lions and leopards et cetera. These days genetic material from the various wild cat species can be analysed using a range of molecular tests to figure out how closely related species are to one another. …
Think about it, from gods to devils, the domestic cat has been both. There could hardly be a bigger spectrum of superstitions projected onto the innocent cat by the mighty but eternally silly human. Until the Middle Ages the cat was generally respected although it is a myth that the Ancient Egyptians treated the …
The Egyptians kept their cats to themselves and under close guard. They made their export illegal. This restricted the spread of the newly domesticated wildcat to other parts of the world. In 500 BC cats were almost unheard of in Greece and Rome. At that time ferrets were the animals chosen for rodent control. …
In ancient Egypt, during the cult of Bastet, when the cat was elevated to a god around 1000 to 2000 BC, hundreds of thousands of cats were buried along the banks of the River Nile in great cat cemeteries which contained huge underground vaults. The cats became mummified. It is astonishing to think that …
In America, in the early 1870s, it appears that Spratts were advertising commercially prepared cat food. Their primary market was for dog food. I don’t know if the 1870s was categorically the start of “cat food” meaning food designed exclusively for cats but it is probably fair to say that it occured around this …
