You may not have realized this, but I like cats.
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| And they like me. |
But how did we get so lucky as to be blessed with a world in
which cats exist? Out of all the animals that we could have domesticated, how
did we end up with God’s perfect killing machines shedding all over our sofas?
For some time, it was believed that cats were first
domesticated in Egypt about 4,000 years ago – something about all those cat
mummies. But in 2004, that theory was put to sleep when archeologists discovered
the remains of a 9,500-year-old domesticated cat in a grave in Cyprus.
While these cat remains weren’t exactly wearing a collar at the time of
discovery, scientists deduced that the cat was domesticated because it was
found alongside human remains. I like to think that they both died at the same
time, of natural and painless causes.
In 2007, a study published
in the journal Science found that domestic cats originated,
not from North Africa, as previously thought, but from the Near East in a little
region called the Fertile Crescent, aka, the cradle of human civilization.
Early domestic cats may also have appeared in Central Asia. DNA from the
European wildcat (Felis silvestris
silvestris), traditionally believed to be the ancestor of the domestic cat
due to their similar appearance, was
compared to DNA from several subspecies of F.
s. silvestris, including the central Asian wildcat, F. s. ornata; the Near Eastern wildcat, F. s. lybica; the Chinese desert cat, F. s. bieti; and the Southern African wildcat, F. s. cafra.. The researchers found that the Near Eastern wildcat specimens, which came from the deserts of the UAE, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and
Bahrain, shared mitochondrial DNA with the domestic cat specimens, as well as other
genetic similarities that point to the Near Eastern wildcat being the most
likely ancestor of the domestic cat. The researchers think it’s likely that cat
domestication is as old as human civilization itself – or at least 10,000 to
12,000 years.
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| F. s. gordoni, a subspecies of the Near Eastern wildcat. |
So, how did we domesticate cats? Early farmers’ food stores
attracted rodents, and scholars believe that those rodents attracted cats. Presumably,
as time passed, those cats realized that humans could offer warmth, affection,
and a greater variety of easier-to-obtain vittles -- thus, a beautiful friendship between two species of bloodthirsty killers was born.
Some argue, however, that we didn’t domesticate cats, so
much as they
domesticated themselves – we were just kind of doing our thing, and cats
just kind of showed up and started benefiting from that. Some even argue that cats
are not yet fully domesticated. They point to the fact that domestic cats
often survive just fine in feral colonies, without human intervention, and that
feral domestic cats continue to interbreed with European, Near Eastern, and
other closely-related wildcats, to such an extent that this
interbreeding is threatening
some species. Even a domestic cat that has lived all of its life
with humans could, at least in theory, strike out on its own and make a life
for itself just by killing and eating things, although I think it totally
depends on the cat, and also why would it do that when it can just get some
other schmuck to feed it, I mean, come
on, that’s what they do.
You may have noticed that, unlike some domesticated species, like dogs, cats all kind of look the same. Sure, some have long fur
and some have short legs,
and some are completely bald, and some have pushed-in faces. And, of course, domestic
cats have all different kinds of markings – they come in tabby, marmalade,
calico, tuxedo, black, white, gray, tortoiseshell, and any combination of
rosettes, stripes, spots, and points. But, when compared to different breeds of dogs, different breeds of cats are all pretty similar – they’re all roughly the same size, they mostly have the same
kind of tail (except when they
don’t), the same kind of ears (except when they don’t),
the same face (except
when they don’t), the same air of casual disdain, and the same obsession with pointless murder.
When early humans domesticated most other animals, they, the humans, needed them, the animals, to do specific things that the animals weren’t otherwise
inclined to do, like herd sheep, or kill rats, or bring back dead waterfowl
from the middle of the lake, or look stupid. No one really needed cats to do
anything, except kill mice and rats, and they were already doing that. Domestic
cats probably became a lot more social through domestication; they’re not only much
friendlier to people than they might otherwise be, but they also bond more
readily with other domestic cats and even other domestic species, like dogs and
goats. But they may very well
have self-selected for that trait, so for many millennia, there was really no
need for humans to selectively breed cats the way that we have other domestic
animals. They've remained pretty much the same, while we’ve become more and
more interested in opening their cat food cans and stealing their poop. If
anything, they’ve domesticated us – with
a little help from their old friend, Toxoplasmosis gondi.
