102 



THE BEASTS OF PREY. 



degenerated in the woods. The latter are frequently 

 met with, but they never attain the size of the Wild 

 Cats, though greatly exceeding that of the domestic 

 Cat. They are as ferocious and dangerous as the 

 Wild Cat, and after several generations have been 

 born wild in the forest these animals come to resem- 

 ble their progenitor, the Egyptian Cat, in color and 

 marking, though always lacking the blunt tail, the 

 light spot at the throat and the dark soles of their 

 ancestor. The animal known as Wild Cat in America , 

 is very different from the European animal of that 

 name, and is in reality a Lynx. (See Red Lynx.) 



THE EGYPTIAN CAT. 



The next member of this group is the Egyptian 

 Cat {Felis mamculata). Ruppell discovered it in 

 Nubia, on the western bank of the Nile, in a desert 

 where rocky stretches of country alternated with 

 bushy tracts. Later writers have found it in Sou- 

 dan, in Abyssinia, in the innermost centre of Africa 

 and in Palestine. The length of its body is about 



that the Egyptian Cat is more common in the 

 Niam-Niam country than in any other part of 

 Africa that has been fully explored, so that the cen- 

 ter of the continent might be considered the point 

 from which it spread. The Niam-Niam do not pos- 

 sess a domestic Cat, in the proper meaning of the 

 word, but their boys capture the Egyptian Cat and 

 wholly or partially tame it. At first they are tied in 

 the vicinity of the huts, and soon become com- 

 pletely at home in the house, where they make it 

 their business to catch the Mice which infest these 

 dwellings in great numbers. 



Venerated Ebers in "An Egyptian Princess," 

 by the Ancient says : " The Cat was probably the 

 Egyptians. most sacred of all the sacred ani- 

 mals which the Egyptians regarded with veneration. 

 Herodotus says that when one of their houses was 

 on fire, the Egyptians first thought of saving the 

 Cat and then of putting out the fire, and when a Cat 

 died they cut off their own hair as a sign of mourn- 

 ing. When a person wittingly or unwittingly caused 



u'- -f P'- 



THE EGYPTIAN CAT. This picture has a familiar look, the resemblance to the hoysercat being so marked. Although still dis- 

 puted by some naturalists the great weight of authority shows the Egyptian Cat to be the progenitor of our domestic feline. The markings 

 of the fur in the Egyptian Cat are shown in the picture, and no differences from the house-cat are observable that cannot be accounted for by 

 the wild life led by the former. {Felis maniculata.) 



twenty inches and its tail measures a little over ten 

 inches. These are not the exact dimensions of pur 

 domestic Cat, but they approximate them closely. 



The arrangement of the colors of the fur is much 

 like that on some of our Cats. The mummies and 

 pictures on Egyptian monuments agree most closely 

 with this species, and evidently tend to prove that 

 this was the domestic Cat of the Egyptians. Per- 

 haps the priests imported it into Egypt from south- 

 ern Nubia. It probably extended thence to Arabia 

 and Syria, and later to Greece, Italy and the remain- 

 der of Europe, and in more modern times, emigrat- 

 ing Europeans spread it still farther. 



The observations of Schweinfurth in the Niam- 

 Niam country ar£ of great weight as evidence that 

 the Egyptian Cat is the original stock from which 

 the race of our domestic Cats descended. He says 



the death of one of these animals, he forfeited his 

 life. Diodorus himself saw a Roman citizen, who 

 had killed a Cat, put to death by a mob, though the 

 government, in its fear of Rome, tried its best to 

 pacify the people. Dead Cats were artistically em- 

 balmed, and of all mummified animals that are 

 found, the Cat, carefully swathed in linen bandages, 

 is the most common." 



THE DOMESTIC CAT. 



All researches point to the fact that the Cat was 

 first tamed by the Egyptians, and not by the Hin- 

 doos, or any northern people. The old Egyptian 

 monuments speak clearly in pictures, signs and 

 mummies, while the records of other nations do not 

 even give us food for conjecture. The very fact 

 that the mummies of both the domestic Cat and 



