‘When you have a cat at home you live with the essence of tiger’. We know that domestic cats are a whisker away from their wild relatives genetically, physically and in terms of personality. And here they are together divided by a fence because there is no feline rule book which forbids one cat eating another! They are interested in each other. If you let your imagination free for a moment, it is almost as if the tigers have become domestic cat friends divided by a garden fence.
‘A cat’s body is, in essence, a reflection of its diet’. Cats are ‘hypercarnivores’.
The domestic cat is one of 8 lineages of the family of cats. The others are: ocelot, puma, leopard cat, panther (big cats), lynx, caracal and Bay cat. These are distinct types of cat genetically (polygenetically). Molecular genetics has allowed scientists to work this out. Before this science, cats were classified by how they looked and lived and where they lived.
‘The domestic cat lineage has its origins in the Mediterranean region, about 8-10 million years ago.’ – in other words that’s when these ‘types’ of cats diverged from the others. This lineage includes the domestic cat, the black-footed cat, jungle cat, Chines mountain cat, sand cat and the wildcats.
Note: the quoted sections are from Wild Cats Of The World by Mel and Fiona Sunquist. Great book.
P.S. Wild cat hybrid cat breeders have for many years worked on the principle that some cat owners want to live close to the domestic cat’s wild relatives in safety. The wild cat hybrids bring the wild into the home in a more pronounced way. I am not a fan of wild cat hybrids because I am a much bigger fan of shelter cats and adopting them. We should all do that. There should be no breeds of any kind.
