Your cat is descendant from an ancient god

By Al Lowe
Contributor

An awful lot of people have cats. I bet that most of you don’t know that your ordinary house cat is really descendant from a god!
Sometime about 500 years ago or so, the Egyptians domesticated the wild African cat.
This animal is about the size of our house cat, and is grey with darker stripes on body and legs, much like a lot of the cats we commonly see today.
Anyway, the Egyptians kept these tamed cats to protect their grain stores from mice and rats. Grain was so important to the Egyptians, and the cats were so valuable in their jobs, that the cat was considered to be a personal representative of one of the gods.
Many ancient statues are of cats, and some of the Pharaohs had cats buried with them to protect their granaries in the next world.
Cats were taken by traders, probably Phoenicians, to Italy. From there, the Romans took them all over the known world, Europe and Britian included. There were already wild cats in these places, and the imports probably crossed with the natives, to give rise to different colour patterns and body types.
Incidentally, there are still wild cats in Europe and Africa, although their numbers are decreasing rapidly.
Man has created, by selective breeding, hundreds of different types of dogs, but not very many types of cats.
There are two types of long-haired cats, the Persian and the Angora. They probably came from the middle east. The Isle of Man, between Britian and Ireland, has given us a rather odd cat with no tail at all, the Manx cat.
The tortoise-shell cats white, black, orangy-yellow, are almost always females. The genes for this colour pattern seem to be associated with the sex chromosomes. Pure black and pure white are fairly common in domestic cats.
The oddest cat is the Siamese. It has a very distinctive colour pattern. The short-haired body is usually very light buff or creamy, with the legs, tail, ears and face a much darker colour. Many of these cats have blue eyes.
The cat family includes some big and powerful relatives of our common tabby. In Canada, the Lynx, Bobcat and Puma are our big cats. The largest cat in America is the Jaguar.
Our little domestic cat can very easily turn wild. Try to pick up some of those cute little kittens you find in an old barn, and you will soon find that out.
Domesticity is not very deep in the common cat. Cats don’t have the same kind of loyalty or devotion as do dogs, but they will keep the mice and rats under control.
And if you treat them really nicely, they may even condescend to let you pet them once in a while.
Felis domesticus acts as if he is fully aware of his godlike ancestry.