The cat (Felis catus), also known as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from other felines, is a small carnivorous species of crepuscular mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and its ability to hunt vermin, snakes and scorpions. It has been associated with humans for at least 9,500 years.

A skilled predator, the cat is known to hunt over 1,000 species for food. It can be trained to obey simple commands. Individual cats have also been known to learn on their own to manipulate simple mechanisms, such as doorknobs. Cats use a variety of vocalizations and types of body language for communication, including meowing, purring, hissing, growling, squeaking, chirping, clicking, and grunting. With 69 million of them present in American homes,[http://www.animalsheltering.org/resource_library/magazine_articles/jan_feb_2003/cat_is_top_dog.html AVMA Survey Confirms Cat's Status as Top Dog] cats are the most or the second most popular pets in that country. Cats also may be the most popular pet in the world, with over 600 million in homes all over the world.http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=35944126 They are also bred and shown as registered pedigree pets. This hobby is known as the "Cat Fancy".

Until recently the cat was commonly believed to have been domesticated in ancient Egypt, where it was a cult animal. However a 2007 study found that all house cats are probably descended from a group of as few as five self-domesticating African Wildcats Felis silvestris lybica circa 8000 BC, in the Near East.

Category: Image - :Egypte louvre 058new.jpg|200px|thumb|An Ancient Egyptian figurine of a cat, from the Louvre museum.

The History of cats' relationship with man is as old as civilization and stretches back over 9,500 years. Cats have figured in the history of many nations, are the subject of legend and are a favorite subject of artists and writers.

The exact history of human interaction with cats is still somewhat vague. However, a gravesite discovered in 1983 in Cyprus , dating to 7500 BC, during the Neolithic period, contains the skeletons of a ceremonially buried human and a type of young cat. Since cats are not native to Cyprus, this suggests that cats were domesticated (or just tamed) at least this early.

Vikings used cats as rat catchers and companions.

In Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet (also spelled Sachmet, Sakhet, Sekmet, Sakhmet and Sekhet; and given the Greek name, Sacmis), was originally the warrior goddess of Upper Egypt. She is depicted as a lioness, the fiercest hunter known to the Egyptians. It was said that her breath created the desert. She was seen as the protector of the pharaohs.

Her cult was so dominant in the culture that when the first pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty, Amenemhat I, moved the capital of Egypt to Itjtawy, the centre for her cult was moved as well. Religion, the royal lineage, and the authority to govern were intrinsically interwoven in Ancient Egypt during its ten thousand years of existence.

Sekhmet is a solar deity, often considered an aspect of the Goddesses Hathor and Bast. She bears the solar disk, and the Uraeus which associates her with Wadjet and royalty. With these associations she can be construed as being a divine arbiter of Ma'at (Justice, or Order), The Eye of Horus and connecting her with Tefnut as well.

As Lower Egypt had been conquered by Upper Egypt, Sekhmet was seen as the more powerful of the two warrior goddesses, the other, Bast, being the similar warrior goddess of Lower Egypt. Consequently, it was Sekhmet who was seen as the Avenger of Wrongs, and the Scarlet Lady, a reference to blood, as the one with bloodlust. She also was seen as a special goddess for women, ruling over menstruation.

Category: Image - :Luxor Sekhmet New Kingdom.JPG|thumb|left|Sekhmet from the temple of Mut at Luxor, granite, 1403-1365 BC - National Museum, Copenhagen

Sekhmet became identified in some later cults as a daughter of the new sun god, Ra, when his cult merged with and supplanted the worship of Horus (the son of Hathor, who was one of the oldest of Egyptian deities and gave birth daily to the sun). At that time many roles of deities were changed in the Egyptian myths. Some were changed further when the Greeks established a royal line of rulers that lasted for three hundred years and some of their historians tried to create parallels between deities in the two pantheons.

Her name suits her function and means, the (one who is) powerful. She also was given titles such as the (One) Before Whom Evil Trembles, the Mistress of Dread, and the Lady of Slaughter.

Sekhmet was believed to protect the pharaoh in battle, stalking the land, and destroying the pharaoh's enemies with arrows of fire. An early Egyptian sun deity also, her body was said to take on the bright glare of the midday sun, gaining her the title Lady of Flame. It was said that death and destruction were balm for her warrior's heart and that the hot desert winds were believed to be her breath.Sources from Sekhmet article by Caroline Seawright at Tour Egypt, retrieved December 8, 2007.

Category: Image - :PartOfAMenat-HariesisStandsBySehkmetFlankedByWadjetAndNekhbet.png|thumb|right|300px |Image from a ritual Menat necklace, depicting a ritual being performed before a statue of Sekhmet on her throne, she also is flanked by the goddess Wadjet as the cobra and the goddess Nekhbet as the white vulture, symbols of lower and upper Egypt respectively who always were depicted on the crown of Egypt and referred to as the two ladies, and the supplicant holds a complete menat and a sistrum for the ritual, circa 870 B.C. (Berlin, Altes Museum, catalogue number 23733)

In order to placate Sekhmet's wrath, her priestesses performed a ritual before a different statue of the goddess on each day of the year. This practice resulted in many images of the goddess being preserved. It is estimated that more than seven hundred statues of Sekhmet once stood in one funerary temple alone, that of Amenhotep III, on the west bank of the Nile. It was said that her statues were protected from theft or vandalism by coating them with anthrax.

Sekhmet also was seen as a bringer of disease as well as the provider of cures to such ills. The name "Sekhmet" literally became synonymous with physicians and surgeons during the Middle Kingdom. In antiquity, many members of Sekhmet's priesthood often were considered to be on the same level as physicians.

She was envisioned as a fierce lioness, and in art, was depicted as such, or as a woman with the head of a lioness, who was dressed in red, the colour of blood. Sometimes the dress she wears exhibits a rosetta pattern over each nipple, an ancient leonine motif, which can be traced to observation of the shoulder-knot hairs on lions. Tame lions were kept in temples dedicated to Sekhmet at Leontopolis.

Category: Image - :GD-EG-KomOmbo016.JPG|thumb|left|The warrior goddess Sekhmet, shown with her sun disk and cobra crown

To pacify Sekhmet, festivals were celebrated at the end of battle, so that the destruction would come to an end. During an annual festival held at the beginning of the year, a festival of intoxication, the Egyptians danced and played music to soothe the wildness of the goddess and drank great quantities of beer ritually to imitate the extreme drunkenness that stopped the wrath of the goddess?when she almost destroyed humankind. This may relate to averting excessive flooding during the inundation at the beginning of each year as well, when the Nile ran blood-red with the silt from upstream and Sekhmet had to swallow the overflow to save humankind.

In 2006, Betsy Bryan, an archaeologist with Johns Hopkins University excavating at the temple of Mut presented her findings about the festival that included illustrations of the priestesses being served to excess and its adverse effects being ministered to by temple attendants."Sex and booze figured in Egyptian rites", archaeologists find evidence for ancient version of ?Girls Gone Wild'. From MSNBC, Oct 30, 2006 Participation in the festival was great, including the priestesses and the population. Historical records of tens of thousands attending the festival exist. These findings were made in the temple of Mut because when Thebes rose to greater prominence, Mut absorbed the warrior goddesses as some of her aspects. First, Mut became Mut-Wadjet-Bast, then Mut-Sekhmet-Bast (Wadjet having merged into Bast), then Mut also assimilated Menhit, another lioness goddess, and her adopted son's wife, becoming Mut-Sekhmet-Bast-Menhit, and finally becoming Mut-Nekhbet. These temple excavations at Luxor discovered a "porch of drunkenness" built onto the temple by the pharaoh Hatshepsut, during the height of her twenty year reign.

In a later myth developed around an annual drunken Sekhmet festival, Ra, by then the sun god of Upper Egypt, created her from a fiery eye gained from his mother (Hathor), to destroy mortals who conspired against him (Lower Egypt). In the myth, Sekhmet's blood-lust was not quelled at the end of battle and led to her destroying almost all of humanity, so Ra tricked her by turning the Nile red like blood (the Nile turns red every year when filled with silt during inundation) so that Sekhmet would drink it. However, the red liquid was not blood, but beer mixed with pomegranate juice so that it resembled blood, making her so drunk that she gave up slaughter and became an aspect of the gentle Hathor.

After Sekhmet's worship moved to Memphis, as Horus and Ra had been identified as one another under the name Ra-Herakhty?when the two religious systems were merged and Ra became seen as a form of Atum, known as Atum-Ra?so Sekhmet, as a form of Hathor, was seen as Atum's mother as Hathor had been the mother of the sun, giving birth anew to it every day. She then was seen as the mother of Nefertum, the youthful form of Atum who emerged in later myths, and so was said to have Ptah, Nefertum's father, as a husband when most of the goddesses acquired counterparts as paired deities.

Although Sekhmet again became identified as an aspect of Hathor, over time both evolved back into separate deities because the characters of the two goddesses were so vastly different. Later, as noted above, the creation goddess Mut, the great mother, gradually became absorbed into the identities of the patron goddesses, merging with Sekhmet, and also sometimes with Bast.

Sekhmet was considered to be the mother of Maahes.

Cat senses are adaptations that allow cats to be highly efficient predators. Cats have acute sight, hearing and smell, and their sense of touch is enhanced by long whiskers that protrude from their heads and bodies. These senses allow cats to hunt effectively in dim light or at night.

Cat communication consists of a range of methods with which cats communicate with humans, other cats, and other animals. While superficially cats may seem to lack social behaviour, in fact close study reveals a wide repertoire of subtle behaviours, which serve cats in their natural wild setting where they form organized hierarchies, and in their domestic interactions with humans.

:This article is an expansion of a section entitled: Body language from within the main article: Cat communication

Category: Image - :DSCN0738.JPG|right|thumb|250ppx|Relaxed cat

Category: Image - :Dami.jpg|right|thumb|200ppx|Playful cat

Category: Image - :Predatorycat ubt.jpeg|right|thumb|200ppx|Aggressive cat

Category: Image - :Surprised cat.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Surprised cat

Cats communicate a variety of messages using cat body language.

Examples include arching their backs as a signal of fear or aggression, and slowly blinking to signal relaxation. As is the case with dogs, the tail is often used as a signaling mechanism. A twitch can indicate minor irritation, and a tail held high suggests confidence. In addition, a cat's tail may "wag" or move rapidly to express a state of conflict. A cat who chooses to lie with its stomach and chest exposed conveys happiness, trust, and comfort (this is also typical of overweight cats, as it is more comfortable for them); however, a cat may also roll on its side/back to be able to defend itself with all four sets of claws. Usually other signs (like ears and whiskers folded backwards) give an indication of the cat's overall humour. A cat with tail held high and twitching shows excitement, but this is often mistaken for anger. Flattened ears mean that the cat feels threatened, and may attack. Mouth open and no teeth exposed suggests a feeling of playfulness.