DOMESTICATION OF CATS
Egyptian hunting cat, ancestor of domestic cats
Domesticated cats most likely originated from African wild cats or Asian desert cats. Although both species have the same number of chromosomes as Domesticated cats, Asian desert cats are common around human settlements and are easily tamed. [Source: Nicolle Birch Anna Toenjes, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]
Laura Geggel wrote in Live Science: Neolithic farmers in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) domesticated cats about 10,000 years ago to keep vermin at bay. The earliest evidence of cat domestication is from Anatolia, but the ancient Egyptians also domesticated cats. It's unclear if Anatolia cats and the Egyptian cats are from the same, or different, lineages. Cats were so useful, farmers took them to Europe as far back as 4400 B.C., and the cats quickly spread as sailors and other rodent haters took them around the ancient world. [Source Laura Geggel, Live Science, June 21, 2017]
However, it wasn't until the Middle Ages that a recessive gene mutation linked with tabby cat markings appeared. This mutation showed up first in the Near East and then spread throughout Europe and Africa. In addition, it wasn't until the 19th century that humans began breeding cats to have fancy fur coat patterns. This indicates that early cat domestication focused on behavioral traits rather than aesthetic ones, the researchers said.
"This suggests that for a very long time, cats have not been subject to strong selection through breeding," said study co-senior researcher Eva-Maria Geigl, a research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research. "The present-day breeds, in particular the fancy breeds, are mostly a modern 'invention' from the 19th century."
According to the Washington Post: “Cats probably started living close to humans when people evolved from nomadic herding to raising livestock and crops and started storing food, which attracted mice and other rodents. Cats found good hunting there, and humans surely appreciated the sly little predators' help protecting their stocks. "There was a mutual benefit," Lyons said. "There was a food source of mice and rats all around the grain. So it was beneficial for both cats and humans as the cats came closer to human populations and kind of domesticated themselves." From there, domesticated cats started to radiate out to different parts of the world, often following humans on their migrations. Today cats can be divided genetically into four broad groups: those from Europe, the Mediterranean, East Africa and Asia. [Source: Rob Stein, Washington Post, March 17, 2008]
Early Evidence of Cat Domestication
suborder feliformia
Katja Pettinen wrote in Woman’s World: A more ancient set of clues comes from the burial of a man who lived on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, close to the coast of Turkey, some 9,000 years ago. What is unique about this grave is that the man was buried with an 8-month-old cat, both of their bodies positioned to face the west. This was a carefully crafted burial meant to shepherd the man into the afterlife. [Source: Katja Pettinen, Woman’s World,, April 18, 2023]
In fact, the human-cat relationship reaches as far back as 10,000 years, before any civilizations or cities, but with one new feature in human existence: agriculture. Once humans shifted from foraging for foods to producing foods, they faced the challenge of storage. This new accumulation of food surplus brought many uninvited guests, including cats. Cats, who are carnivores, did not care to eat these grains. Rather, they caught the mice, rats, and even birds who showed up to enjoy the brand-new buffet of grains.
It didn’t take long for cats to become valued, even beloved, entering the human fold. Besides the ancient burials of the day, cats are also carved and shaped into stone and clay figures throughout the Near East. All around, both the material remains and the representational figures tell us a very concrete story about how special the human-cat relationship has been for thousands of years.
According to Live Science: A 2016 study published in the journal Genome Research found evidence of ancient cat hybridization, which may have shaped the evolution of modern-day cats. This historical interbreeding may help to explain why so many hybrid cat combinations are possible in captivity today. [Source: Patrick Pester, Live Science, October 25, 2023]
How the Chinese Domesticated Cats 5,300 Years Ago
Cat bones, dated to 5,300 years ago, from a Chinese village ago give clues to how wild felines became house pets. Malcolm Ritter of Associated Press wrote: “It was the cat's appetite that started it down the path to domestication, scientists believe. The grain stored by ancient farmers was a magnet for rodents. And that drew wild cats into villages to hunt the little critters. Over time, wild cats adapted to village life and became tamer around their human hosts. [Source: Malcolm Ritter, Associated Press December 16, 2013 +++]
“That's the leading theory, anyway, for how wild cats long ago were transformed and became ancestors of today's house cats. That happened in the Middle East, rather than China. But bones from the Chinese village back up the idea that felines took on the pest-control job in ancient times, says researcher Fiona Marshall of Washington University in St. Louis. Marshall is an author of a report on the fossil research, published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, focused on an agricultural village in northern China, comes from a poorly understood time in the history of cats. The first evidence of domesticated cats comes much later, in Egyptian artwork from about 4,000 years ago. +++
“So what went on in that village? Researchers found signs that rodents were threatening the village grain supply. Storage vessels were designed to keep them out, and rodents had burrowed into a grain-storage pit. In the ancient feline bones, chemical signatures indicated that the cats had eaten animals that in turn had fed on millet, a grain crop known to be harvested by the villagers. So apparently, the cats were indeed going after the rodents.It's not yet clear whether the cats were from a local wild population, or were already domesticated and had been brought in from elsewhere, Marshall said. Either way, it shows that ancient cats filled the niche at the heart of the hypothesis about how domestication began, she said. Greger Larson of Durham University in England called the new work "an important step forward." Few studies have focused on how cats became domesticated, in contrast to dogs, pigs and sheep, he said.” +++
Cats in Ancient Egypt
cat mummiesDomestic cats were present in ancient Egypt at least as early as 2000 B.C. So strong was the Egyptian love of cats that laws were established protect them from injury and death. Cats were mummified, buried in bronze coffins, and honored with elaborate funerals and a period of mourning. Cats are believed to have been domesticated by the Egyptians by around 3000 B.C. to get rid of grain-eating rodents.
The Egyptians produced lovely sculptures of cats. They were associated with the goddess Bastet. The belief that cats have nine lived is believed to have originated in Egypt based on the fact that cats can survive long falls. There were temples for Bastet, where mummified cats were left as offerings and kittens were bred by the thousands to meet the demand or offerings.
Herodotus wrote that cats were considered so important that exporting them was illegal and killing one was a crime punishable by death. Owners of cats that died naturally were required to shave off their eyebrows.
Egypt's most well known cat is the sphinx. Cats were "mummified in the millions" and buried as offerings. Priests carefully watched over temples cats. Their movements were sources of omens. In the 19th century so many mummified cats were exhumed that they were shipped to Britain as ballast, then ground into fertilizer." Lions were said to accompany the pharaohs in battle and were give names like “Slayer of his Foes.” Killing a lion was regarded as an act of extraordinary bravery. Inscriptions describe the breeding and burial of lions. Thus far only one lion mummy has been found.
Cats were "mummified in the millions" in ancient Egypt and buried as offerings. In 1888, a farmer digging in the sand near the village of Istabl Antar found a huge mass grave of cat mummies. English Illustrated magazine reported: “Not one or two here and there but dozens, hundreds of thousands, a layer of them, a stratum thicker than most coal seams, ten to twenty cats deep.” Some were beautifully warped with linen and had gilded faces. The best ones were sold to tourists by village children. The rest were sold as fertilizer. More than 180,000 were hauled away on one ship to Liverpool and used to enrich the soils of England.
Some of the better-prepared kitten mummies found at Istabl Antar were wrapped in linen in a spiral patterns and given a painted mask. The mummies were then placed in a wooden coffin, shaped like an adult cat in a sphinx position that stood about 36 centimeters tall, dwarfing the mummy inside.
Studying Cat Domestication
Naomi Sykes, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter, is studying why humans feed animals and how this have affected domestication along with Angela Cassidy, also at the University of Exeter, who has written about the internecine wars over the culling of badgers in Britain; Gary Marvin, an anthropologist at the University of Roehampton, who holds one of the world’s few professorships in human-animal studies; Stuart Black, a geochemist at the University of Reading; and Andrew Kitchener, principal curator of vertebrates at National Museums Scotland.
“The group is limiting its research geographically to Britain, for practical and logistical reasons. Its attention is mainly focused on the roles played by birds and cats in human life, as pets, pests, wild animals and zoo animals. In each case, they are asking the same broad questions about the origin of and reason behind various feeding methods, and what needs to change, if anything.
“For instance, Sykes will be looking at the archaeological records of cats from Roman settlements. Black will be studying the isotopes in modern and ancient cat bones to determine what cats were eating. Did monks’ cats in fact eat a lot of fish? He has already proved his technique on modern cats. “We can tell a fishy cat from a meaty cat,” he said. “In fact we can tell an Iams cat from a Whiskers cat,” although he concedes that knowledge may not be so useful in studying felines from the Middle Ages.
DNA Studies of the Domestication of Cats
Rob Stein wrote in Washington Post, “In one of the most comprehensive explorations of cats' origins to date, Lyons and her colleagues spent about five years collecting feline DNA, poking behind the whiskers of more than 1,100 Persians, Siamese, street cats and household tabbies around the world to swab inside their mouths. The genetic samples came from 22 breeds of fancy cats, mostly in the United States, along with an assortment of feral and pet cats in Korea, China, Kenya, Israel, Turkey, Vietnam, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Egypt, Italy, Finland, Germany, the United States and Brazil. [Source: Rob Stein, Washington Post, March 17, 2008]
“By analyzing 39 genetic signposts in the samples, the researchers were able to investigate a variety of questions, including which breeds are most closely related and where they most likely originated. The first thing the group did was confirm a report published in June 2008 in the journal Science that the domestication of cats about 10,000 years ago appeared to have occurred in an area known as the Fertile Crescent, which stretches from Turkey to northern Africa and to modern-day Iraq and Iran. "Our data support the Fertile Crescent, specifically Turkey, as one of the origin sites for cats," said Lyons, who published her findings in the January issue of the journal Genomics. "Turkey was part of the Fertile Crescent and hence was one of the earliest areas for agricultural development."
In their study of the domestic cat's origins, Geigl's team extracted ancient DNA from feline bones. These 6,000-year-old cat specimens from Hierakonpolis, Egypt, were not used in the analysis, but the kitty bone and teeth specimens that were included underwent a rigorous analysis. "Starting from archeological bones and teeth, we powdered a little part of them in a machine that is cooled with liquid nitrogen, extracted DNA from this powder with chemicals, purified the DNA and analyzed it," Geigl told Live Science. [Source Laura Geggel, Live Science, June 21, 2017]
Cats and Christianity
Romans kept dogs and cats and did so after the were Christianized and perhaps their religion played a role in how were domesticated. James Gorman wrote in the New York Times: Remains of the cats are found in settlements along with remains of wildcats that seemed to be living with or near humans as well, not as pets, but not quite wild either. “That got me thinking about cat diet, which then made me think, wait a minute, why do we feed domestic cats fish?” asks Sykes, [Source: James Gorman, New York Times, May 12, 2021]
“Could Christianity have something to do with it? “I think that monks start keeping cats for the first time, at least in Britain, as domestic pets,” she explained. “And they keep them because they want to have cats to eat the mice that eat the documents that they’re writing. And of course, monks are eating fish because they’re required to fast all the time.” Perhaps, she said, the monks fed the cats fish. The practice spread. And now an entire separate fishery catches fish for cat food. That worries Sykes because of its environmental impact. She says shoppers don’t put the same pressure for sustainability on the cat food fleets that they do on fisheries providing food for people.
Kitchener has look at old cat skeletons from Roman times and saw that wildcats, now restricted to a small population in Scotland, were living in human settlements. Cassidy may look at political policies on feeding stray cats. Marvin said he would be working with postdoctoral researchers employed through the grant to look at cultural artifacts and historical literature to gauge how human attitudes toward cats have changed. He is also working with another postdoctoral researcher in Italy who will pursue anthropological studies among women who feed the feral cats of the coliseum in Rome. This interdisciplinary approach is very important, Marvin said. “To be in a room where a geneticist can be talking to an anthropologist and actually helping to answer questions, or ask more interesting questions — I think it’s quite a feat.”
Cats — Domestic But Not Domesticated
Katja Pettinen wrote in Woman’s World: House cats are fed and cared for, but besides occasional mouse catching, they do not contribute to household tasks, particularly in urban settings. Surely, we can’t group cats with domesticated animals, a category that includes the many species that humans consume as food: cows, chickens, sheep, reindeer, and the rest. Most animals that have been domesticated are there to fulfill some kind of functional relationship for humans: to provide us with calories, hides, or wool, or as a means of transportation. That’s not to say that humans don’t develop close feelings for some of these species, such as horses. In each category, though, these species are there to perform tasks. But cats just don’t pull sleds all that well! [Source: Katja Pettinen, Woman’s World,, April 18, 2023]
For biologists, who commonly wrestle with issues of classification, the term “domesticated” means that there is a clear physical difference between a species in the wild and its domesticated counterpart. Cats and humans are close. Either we acquire them as kittens and build a relationship from the start, or we may come across a feral cat in an alley and with some time, patience, and good treats, this individual can be tamed. And this is where all species domestication got its start: taming an individual, and then bringing consistent control over the three key elements in that creature’s life: food, shelter, and sex.
When it comes to food, cats enjoy the Friskies and other treats we provide them with. But any wild animal will consume food if we provide it. The real question with food is: Can the animals still provide for themselves? And with cats, somewhat unfortunately, we know all too well that they can hunt to kill. Outdoor cats in the US alone kill hundreds of millions of birds every year, even contributing to avian species extinction. Cats also kill mice and other rodents, but as humans, we tend to either welcome this predation or not concern ourselves too much with it.
Because cats maintain their capacity for predation, because they go out and hunt birds and rodents with abandon, they do not fall into “domestication syndrome.” The shelter part as well is also taken care of by the small size of cats: It’s easy for them to find places to tuck into, even in cities with all those sheds, alleyways, and dumpsters. Cats certainly seem to enjoy the comfort of our homes, but if need be they can also shelter themselves.
This brings us to that third factor, sex. One of the most basic concepts in biological conversations about species is “gene flow” — the movement of genetic materials from one population to another. And there really is only one main way for genes to “flow”: through acts of reproduction.
When kitties roam the streets, for this or that reason, even just for that classic cat curiosity, they will meet other cats. And if neither is neutered, and the female is in heat, sex likely follows. Because most cats enter this world from such non-human mediated processes, there is a great deal of gene flow happening: Different populations of cats are genetically continuously connected. Even if your individual kitty is a happy indoor couch potato, they are still part of the genetic population of roamers and hunters.
Broader analyses show that the domestic cat (Felis silvestris catus) is very close genetically, in fact nearly identical, with the wild cat (Felis silvestris). In short, their genes have traveled across the generations. It is this gene flow that maintains biological preparedness in cats to keep moving, hunting, and roaming. They also have hidden deadly weapons, the claws, and a truly exceptional hearing range, being able to detect ultrasonic sounds, just as bats can.
The long and short of it is that modern cats are domestic, often living with us, but they are not actually domesticated. In contrast to dogs, which humans have been biologically sculpting much more closely and for much longer, cats do not enter the world prepared to communicate with humans as a species. But at times, individual cats do choose to hear us. That’s the cat’s life in summary: tamable, yes, domesticated, not so much.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.
Last updated January 2025