ANCESTRY OF THE CAT 



Tabby an Animal of Mixed Blood — Egyptian Wild Cat Probably First Domesticated 



and Has Crossed with Other Cats in Many Lands to Which 



It Was Taken by the Phoenicians 



ALTHOUGH the popular opinion 

 / \ supposes the house cat to be 

 X \. simply a domesticated European 

 wildcat {Felis cattis), which form- 

 erly inhabited all of Britain and ranged 

 over the continent from Greece to 

 Scandinavia, it seems probable that 

 "tabby" cannot trace its descent 

 entirely from one wild species. The 

 breeding, selection and domestication of 

 the cat have been the object of much 

 thought for thousands of years. 



The probable ancestor of most domes- 

 tic cats is a yellowish cat with tiger 

 stripes, Felis libyca, which still roams 

 about Northeastern Africa, hunting 

 mostly at night and living in holes dug 

 by other animals.^ The African cat is 

 but slightly larger than the domestic 

 cat, and often marked quite similarly, 

 although the coloring is usually lighter 

 and more tiger-like than that of the 

 "tabby." There is no more differentia- 

 tion, however, than often appears be- 

 tween house cats living in the same 

 block of a city street. 



Some thousands of years before the 

 advent of the Christian era, Egypt was 

 a land of storehouses overflowing with 

 the rich produce of the fertile Nile 

 valley. Rats and other rodents found 

 no food so available and no shelter so 

 safe as that furnished by the Egyptian 

 granaries. It is probable that the first 

 attempts at domestication of the cat 

 occurred when specimens of Felis libyca, 

 which abounded in the region, were 

 caught and locked up in the grain 

 houses to catch vermin. 



Appreciating the importance of such 

 a protection to the produce of the land, 

 the wily priests soon established the 



cat as a sacred animal, which was to 

 receive every attention from the totemis- 

 tic inhabitants. Temples sprang up in 

 honor of the cat-goddess Pasht, from 

 whose name some think the word 

 "puss" is derived, and cats were 

 mummified with as much ceremony as 

 were men and woinen. The members 

 of a family which lost a cat by death 

 shaved their eyebrows and went into 

 deep mourning. A cemetery was re- 

 cently discovered at Bubastis which 

 3delded several hundred thousand cat 

 mummies, many of them preserved 

 with elaborate care. The present in- 

 habitants of the country took sufficient 

 interest in the feline remains to dispose 

 of them as fertilizer at $15 per ton. 



Perhaps the next nation to become 

 interested in the newly domesticated 

 animal was Phoenicia. The hardy sea- 

 farers must have been greatly troubled 

 with rats aboard their ships, and found 

 the cats a help in protecting the pantry. 

 In their travels the Phoenicians evi- 

 dently took the Egyptian cats to all 

 parts of the then known world, so that 

 many species of wildcats now existing 

 along the Phoenician trade route are 

 believed to be the feral descendants, 

 either direct or crossed with indigenous 

 cats of the locality, of the Phoenician 

 rat-killers. 



The Greeks probably had no cats. 

 The ailuros which they kept on board 

 their ships for killing rats seems to have 

 been the white-breasted martin 

 (Mustela), although the word "cat" is 

 frequently though erroneously used in 

 translating the Greek term. But the 

 Romans evidently possessed them, and 

 it is probable that from Rome they 



^ This cat is also known under the names of F. caffra, F. obscura, F. nigripes, F. maniculata, 

 F. piilchella, F. chaus, F. caligata, F. margarita, F. inconspicua, Chaus caffer, Leopardus iyiconspiciius, 

 etc. The above names are sometimes appHed to other cats than the Egyptian wildcat, but since 

 all the small wildcats interbreed freely, it is difficult to draw any line in nomenclature. The 

 house cat passes everywhere under the name of F. domestica. 



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