Cats have lived in the human world for as long as we can remember. These feline friends have been around for a long time and they seem to have been around forever. Certainly they had to come from somewhere and researchers around the world are trying to determine such interesting facts about domestic cats. Like nature, these pets had much to say in their own destiny, as it is unthinkable that these creatures have evolved in other ways.
All domestic cats in all parts of the world have originated from just 5 lineages in the Fertile Crescent.
According to scientists who studied the DNA of about a thousand domestic and wild cats, there is not much variety among domestic ones. It is surprising that all the domestic cat breeds that people are familiar with come from just five lineages, namely: the Central Asian Wildcat, the Chinese Desert Cat, the Near Eastern Wildcat, and the African Wildcat. Sub-Saharan. All of the original cats stayed in a small territory called the Fertile Crescent that stretches from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.
One scientist said that according to his studies, cats were not trained as pets anywhere else in the world. They were domesticated by those who lived in the Fertile Crescent even before people brought them to other parts of the world.
Today’s house cats have evolved from wilder predecessors 130,000 years ago, however they only date back about 12,500 years. These pets may have more ferocious relatives, but long ago, they have strayed from these big cats.
Cats are not like any other domestic pet in that they are capable of domestication, which is not surprising at all.
People with house cats know that felines rarely do anything except if they wanted to. Cats began to show their disposition as soon as they became loyal companions. They protected human crops from rodents and pests. When people realized the advantages of having cats like keeping vermin away, they wanted to purposely keep them.
Cats can be very useful and therefore people take their cats with them whenever they travel to other distant places. Cats, realizing the value of the human-pet relationship, cooperated.
Cats of Egyptian lineage dominated modern cats today.
Egyptians are known to worship cats. In fact, Bastet, the Egyptian goddess of love, had the head of a cat. Also, in ancient Egypt, when a person is shown to have killed a cat, they are sentenced to death. Egyptians have great respect for cats, which is why they keep them as pets. Most of today’s cats probably come from the Egyptian cat lineage.
According to scientists, Egyptian cats may have become the most popular lineage as they were highly revered. In addition, they consider that these cats are better pets because they are more domesticated and sociable.
