First Tamed Cats

Wild Cat (Manoel) photograph by Eigen Werk, Blijdorp Zoo, Netherlands 1956.
Image file hosted at Wikimedia Commons.

Did you ever wonder where Tabby came from ? The taming of wild cats so that they would dramatically change their lifestyles and join us in the kitchen and on our laps occurred much earlier than previously thought. Wild cats began to hang around our camp sites and villages as early as 9,000 BC. As the first agricultural communities came into existence, a few courageous wild cats came into villages to go after mice that were eating stored grain. These early farmers then decided to foster a small cat population in their villages by taming, wild cats and making them an offer that could not be refused - an unlimited supply of mice for lunch and dinner that required little effort to capture. Prepottery Neolithic villages in Western Asia of 9 - 7,000 BC encouraged these semi-wild cats to hang around for the mice and people love. These cats responded by training themselves to live close to people. These early agricultural societies also incised images of cats into stone, but their exact meaning eludes us.


Wildcat at Ljubljana Zoo, Slovenija. Photo by Pinky sl., 2006.
Image file hosted at Wikimedia Commons.

Until recently, early Egyptians were believed to be the first people to domesticate cats, and there were several Egyptian cat deities including the famous cat goddess Bastet. Cat bones have been found on Cyprus since the 1980s but that only proves that humans brought cats to the island as they did with foxes, not that the cats had been domesticated.

A team of French anthropologists, found a cat burial in a human grave on Cyprus in a large Neolithic village that was lived in between 8300 and 7000 B.C. This grave has been dated to 7500 BC. and a human, a cat and rich grave goods were buried together. The cat pelvis was damaged and sex could not be determined. The grave also contained items believed to be ritual offerings: sea shells, polished stones, tools and jewelry. The burial evidence tells us that this cat was important to the owner. There were no signs that it was butchered and likely it was recognized as 'special' to its owner by family and the village. Both owner and pet were likely buried together so they could journey together in the after life.

The cat belonged to the Felis silvestris species, i.e. the wildcat, which is much larger than modern domestic cats and believed to be the ancestor of early domestic cats in many parts of the world.

In many places, we no longer care if cats chase mice. More importantly, cats purr, they cuddle and they are our quiet and mysteriously therapeutic friends.