Putting aside selectively bred pedigree breeds, which are a tiny minority, most cats choose their own mates and go where they please unless they are neutered and confined to the home. However, although in the West domestic cats are spayed and neutered and often confined to the home, in the majority of the world …
Generally, domestic cats have better immune systems than domestic dogs. I emphasise ‘generally’ because you have to drill down to individual animals (are they purebred or random bred, for instance?). I am referring to purebred dogs and cats and their proportion of the overal population. The proportion of purebred dogs in relation to the …
It came to me in a flash about two minutes ago. Well, I’ve known about it for years and sometimes cogitated on it. The life of a domestic cat is often too easy. The reason why it is too easy is because they are domestic cats. It’s a dilemma. It is a built-in failure …
Domestic cats still hunt because it is in their DNA to do so. It is a characteristic which is a genetic inheritance. It is hard wired into their brains and personalities. And it has not been removed by humans controlling the breeding of cats. The vast majority of domestic cats are random bred. Darwin’s …
For a long time, people believed that the first cat was domesticated in ancient Egypt about 3,500 years ago. There are lots of records of domestic cats of that time as we well know. This information is still disseminated on the Internet by well-established websites. However, the theory was challenged about 10 years ago …
I was told the vague but interesting story of a genuinely wild feral cat who was involved in a traffic accident. He suffered a bruised spine and broken legs. He was paralysed for a while but remarkably he recovered under the care of a cat loving volunteer to whom he became attached. His personality …
Why was the cat domesticated? The advent of farming was the reason why the wild cat came to be domesticated. As Dr Morris says ‘there would have been no taming of the cat before the Agricultural Revolution’. This happened during the New Stone Age or Neolithic period – 10,200 BC to no later than …
What does raised underfoot mean? It means to raise kittens in your home, literally under your feet, as a process of socialization to prepare them for their new home and owner.
