A Michael Broad Blog
There’s been quite a lot of discussion about the first domestic cats in America. We are sure that early Americans, around 10,000 years ago, did not domesticate a wild cat species and thereby create the first domestic cat. That happened in and around what is now Syria with the North African wildcat. So, the …
Quite a lot of people respond to enquiries on why the cat was left out of the Chinese zodiac of 12 animals. After all, they’ve got the dog in the zodiac and the cat is as popular today as the dog. It seems very unfair. There is a myth as to the reason but …
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 around 10k years ago and from there they spread out to other parts of …
Intro: this page contains some opinions too! Here are 20 facts about the closest relations of the domestic cat. The Near Eastern wildcat aka North African wildcat is the ancestor of the domestic cat. There is one group of small wild cats which are very similar in appearance to the domestic cat, specifically the …
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 come from the same roots including the cat family. The first mammals on the …
I have been scratching my head trying to figure out how to write about this so-called cat breed discovered in China and first described by a Polish Jesuit missionary Michael Boym in his book Flora Sinensis (1656). The best source of information about this cat breed is Sarah Hartwell and I would happily refer …
NEWS AND COMMENT: I have been slightly adventurous in the title to this article. But I think I am within acceptable tolerances! Archaeologists have been excavating at an English Heritage site in Richborough, Kent, UK. It’s the site of an amphitheatre just north of Sandwich. Historians have known about it for a long time; …
It is probable that black cat became bad luck during the Middle Ages thanks to Christianity. The fear that all black cats are agents of the devil led to the common superstition which has survived to the present day namely that if a black cat crosses your path, it will bring you bad luck. …
