Concerning the Origin of Cats 



It is thought that cats were introduced into Greece 

 from Egypt, although Professor RoUeston, of Cam- 

 bridge University, believes the Grecian pet cat to 

 have been the white-breasted marten. Yet why 

 should he ? Is not a soft, white-breasted maltese or 

 tabby as attractive ? The idea that cats were domes- 

 ticated in Western Europe by the Crusaders is 

 thought to be erroneous ; but pet cats were often 

 found in nunneries in the Middle Ages, and Pope 

 Gregory the Great, toward the end of the sixth cen- 

 tury, had a pet cat of which he was very fond. 



An old writer says, "A favorite cat sometimes 

 accompanied the Egyptians on these occasions [of 

 sport], and the artist of that day intends to show us 

 by the exactness with which he represents her seiz- 

 ing her prey, that cats were trained to hunt and carry 

 water-fowl." There are old Egyptian paintings repre- 

 senting sporting scenes along the Nile, where the cats 

 plunge into the water of the marshes to retrieve and 

 carry game; while plenty of mural paintings show 

 them sitting under the arm-chair of the mistress of the 

 house. Modern naturalists, however, claim a radical 

 difference between those old Egyptian retrieving cats 

 and our water-hating pussies. There are no records 

 of cats between that period in Egypt, about 1630 e.g., 

 and 260 B.C., when they seem to have become accli- 

 mated in Greece and Rome. There is in the Bor- 

 deaux Museum an ancient picture of a young girl 

 holding a cat, on a tomb of the Gallo-Roman Epoch, 



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