A.
We are all familiar with the domestic cat, an animal that is now the most popular human companion in the world. The image we have, however, of the Burmese or the Siamese curled up in a basket before a fire or gently purring on the lap of its human owner is in historical terms deeply misleading. In fact the cat, or Felis Catus as it is correctly termed, has a long and complex relationship with mankind stretching back over approximately 9,500 years and in that time it has taken on a variety of different roles from hunting companion, protector of crops, good luck charm, religious icon and seer to shipboard rodent catcher.

B.
Traditionally, it was always supposed that it was the Egyptians who first domesticated the cat. The primary evidence for this are the depictions of cats in paintings and statuary in Egypt from over 3,500 years ago and it is indeed the case that the ancient Egyptians had an extraordinarily close relationship with cats. One of the major deities in the New Kingdom, Bast, was a cat-goddess symbolising fertility and motherhood and the Greek historian Herodotus tells how cats were often mummified and given a funeral, sometimes with the mummified remains of mice so that they could enjoy the afterlife. This traditional view has been overturned, however, by the discovery in 2004 of a grave in Cyprus that was 9,500 years old in which the remains of a cat were found next to a human. Clearly, the human association with cats predates the ancient Egyptians by many millennia. It is now thought that it was in the Fertile Crescent, modern-day Iraq, that humans first domesticated the cat. Agriculture was invented in this region and the likelihood is that cats were used to control the rodents and other vermin that fed on the crops and raided the grain stores.

C.
The cat family is a close one and the housecat is so closely related to feral and wildcats to the extent that it is able to interbreed with them. It is still uncertain what the exact genesis of the domestic cat was but informed opinion suggests that it would appear to have more than one ancestor in the cat family. In ancient Egypt, there were two different species of cats, the Jungle Cat and the African Wildcat, which eventually fused together into Felis Catus. In the initial phases of the domestication process, it is likely that the Wildcat was more significant, because, despite its name it was a great deal more docile than the Jungle Cat. More evidence for this is that the Cypriot cat, the earliest cat associated with man, was a Wildcat.

D.
While we cannot be certain of the early history of the cat, we do know that they quickly became popular in many different cultures. They spread from the Fertile Crescent through the Indian sub-continent and into China by 500 BC. Just as had happened in Egypt, magical properties were ascribed to them and they were even occasionally revered as deities. That they were initially given as gifts to Emperors and that only later were the nobility and commoners allowed to own them is a sign of the special status they held.



E.
Their progress westwards was, however, less smooth. Initially, they were brought to Europe by the Greeks and the Romans, despite the attempts by the Egyptians to protect their deity from export. As in other parts of the world, the cats were highly prized for their rodent catching ability and while they were not worshipped, they were brought into the house from the farmyard and began to be kept as pets. This was a highly practical measure as they helped to reduce the impact of the Black Death by killing the rats that were responsible for the spread of the plague. Despite this, in the Middle Ages, Pope Gregory VII proclaimed that the cat was the work of the devil and the superstition arose that people who kept cats were witches and those that cats were not burnt alive with their owners were driven from the towns and villages.

F.
By the 1800s the reputation of the cat had been re-established and, as it became an ever more fashionable household companion, the concept of the pedigree cat breed appeared in the United Kingdom. By 1871 a large show was held at Crystal Place – the site of the Great Exhibition twenty years earlier – for British Shorthair and Persian types. A little later in New England in the United States of America, the Maine Coone breed was shown. This trend increased to the extent that a further 25 breeds of pedigree cats appeared in addition to the 16 naturally occurring breeds. Cat fanciers now compete on a regular basis all over the world in an attempt to prove that their animal is the pre-eminent exemplar of the breed. A far cry from the days when the humble moggy's duty was to ensure that no rats entered the grain store.

G.
Superstitions, legends and mystical beliefs about cats abound all around the world. Some of these can be traced back to the religious awe in which cats were held by early cultures. The modern-day Japanese belief that a cat washing its face is a sign that a visitor will soon arrive can be directly linked to the Maneki Neko – a traditional lucky charm in the form of a sculpture or ceramic figure of a cat beckoning with its paw. Likewise, in Europe there are people who still cross themselves at the sight of an unlucky black cat because of Pope Gregory’s edict against cats, centuries before. Other beliefs have a far more rational basis and result from the physical qualities of the cat. So the cat’s remarkable agility that allows it to escape from potentially life-threatening situations leads the British to suppose that the cat has nine lives, the Spanish that it has six and the Turkish seven.