What Animal Did House Cats Evolve From

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How Long Have Domesticated Cats Been Around?

Did you know that but seventy years ago, few cats lived entirely indoors at all? In fact, for more than than 10,000 years, cats take lived outdoor lives, sharing the environment with birds and wildlife. Understanding cats' place in history and human evolution reveals how very recently domestic cats came indoors and how millions of this species—feral cats—continue to live healthy lives outdoors today, as all domestic cats are biologically adapted to do.

Origins of the Domestic Cat

Cats began their unique relationship with humans 10,000 to 12,000 years agone in the Fertile Crescent, the geographic region where some of the earliest developments in human civilization occurred (encompassing modern day parts of Due west Asia). One such development was agronomics. As people abased their nomadic lifestyle and settled permanently to farm the land, stored grain attracted rodents.

Taking reward of this new, abundant food source, Heart Eastern wildcats, or felix silvestris lybica, preyed on the rodents and decided to stick around these early towns, scavenging the garbage that all human societies inevitably produce—just as feral cats practice today.

Over thousands of years, a new species of true cat somewhen evolved that naturally made its home effectually people: felis catus. Today, pet, devious, and feral cats belong to this species that we phone call the domestic cat.¹

Cats Travel the Globe

Cats formed a mutually beneficial relationship with people, and some scientists fence that cats domesticated themselves.² Particularly prized as mousers on ships, cats traveled with people around the globe:

A burial site in Cyprus provides the first archaeological evidence of humans and cats living side-by-side, as far back equally nine,500 years agone. Cats must accept been brought to the island intentionally by humans.³
In ancient Egypt, cats were worshipped, mummified, and sometimes even dressed in golden jewelry to bespeak the status of their owners.
In 31 BC, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire. Cats were introduced into Roman life, becoming truly widespread in Europe around the 4th century Advertizing.^iv A cat skeleton from this period shows the shortened skull of domestic cats today.⁵
Geoffrey Chaucer mentioned a cat door in The Canterbury Tales in the 1380s.
From Europe, cats boarded ships to the Americas, reportedly tagging forth with Christopher Columbus, with the settlers at Jamestown, and aboard the Mayflower.
Cats connected their service every bit mousers throughout history, fifty-fifty serving as official employees of the United states Mail service equally late as 19th and early 20th century America.⁶
Towards the end of the 19th century, more Americans began to proceed cats for their company as well as their utility. The start cat bear witness was held at Madison Square Garden in 1895. By the end of World War I, cats were normally accepted equally house pets in the U.S.

Throughout all this time, cats were allowed to come up and go freely from human households—fifty-fifty President Calvin Coolidge's true cat had free rein to wander to and from the White Firm during the 1920s. Every bit Sam Stall, author of 100 Cats Who Changed Civilization and The Cat Owner's Transmission, writes, "Dorsum in Coolidge's day no ane idea of confining cats indoors—not even 1 belonging to the president of the United states."⁷

Catering to Cats: Inventing the Indoor Cat

Keeping cats indoors all the time was non possible—nor was it fifty-fifty a goal—until several important 20th century innovations: refrigeration, kitty litter, and the prevalence of spaying and neutering.

Even though these changes to our mod lifestyle make keeping cats inside possible, biologically, cats are the aforementioned as they were thousands of years ago. Their office in our club has evolved and broadened over the terminal hundred years, just their bones behaviors and needs haven't changed.

Cat Food

Unlike dogs, who have undergone many physical changes since domestication and evolved to survive on an omnivorous nutrition, cats oasis't changed much, and nonetheless require a high-protein diet. Before the development of refrigeration and canned cat food in the 20th century, feeding indoor cats who could not supplement their diets by hunting would have been impossible for most Americans, who could non afford extra fresh meat or fish.^viii

Kitty Litter

Upwardly until the 1950s, cats roamed American neighborhoods freely, using the cracking outdoors as their litter expanse. Pans filled with dirt or newspaper were used indoors by a few cat owners, but information technology wasn't until the first clay litter was accidentally discovered in 1947 and the subsequent marketing of the Tidy Cats® brand in the 1960s that litter boxes really caught on. With the invention of cat litter, cats rocketed to popularity equally indoor pets, but their outdoor survival skills remain.⁹

Spaying and Neutering

Until spaying and neutering pets became available and accessible effectually the 1930s, keeping intact cats indoors was messy business during mating season. Techniques had been developed for sterilizing livestock, but American households would have had a hard time finding a veterinarian trained to safely neuter pets before this time.¹⁰ Just as cats found their ain food and litter areas outdoors, 20th century cats bred and gave nascence outdoors as they have done since their origins in the Fertile Crescent 10,000 years ago.

While some of those cats' offspring can – if brought into human contact when they are young enough—successfully exist socialized and integrated into human homes, many cats remain outside, living the same outdoor lives they always have, with or without homo contact. Although adult feral cats—cats that are non socialized to people—cannot become indoor pets, neutering and returning them to their outdoor dwelling improves their lives.

Cats are Role of Our Environment

In the thousands of years that cats have lived alongside people, indoor-only cats have simply become common in the last lx or seventy years—a negligible amount of time on an evolutionary scale.

Throughout human history, cats have always lived and thrived outside. It is merely recently that we have begun to introduce reproduction control like spaying and neutering to bring them indoors. And too, bring the outdoors to them: using canned nutrient and litter boxes to satisfy biological needs developed over thousands of years of living outdoors.

Although human civilization and domestic cats co-evolved side by side, the feral cat population was not created by humans. Cats have lived outdoors for a long time—they are non new to the surround and they didn't simply originate from lost pets or negligent pet owners. Instead, they have a identify in the natural landscape.

Feral cats deserve a chance to live their lives exterior just every bit they accept for thousands of years. Indoor homes are non an option because they have non been socialized to live with humans. They would be scared and unhappy indoors. Their habitation is the outdoors and—just like squirrels, raccoons, and birds—they're well suited to their outdoor home.

Accepting and acknowledging this simple reality is cardinal to understanding and helping these animals. TNR is an act of compassion society can extend to them.

Just as many, many kind people place bird feeders, suet and bird houses in the gardens to help increase the odds of birds living through cold winters, many kinds people feed feral cats and build outdoor shelters for them.

Through TNR, we further help cats by spaying and neutering them and having them vaccinated.

This is not only good for the cats, but also does a overnice job of balancing needs and concerns of the human communities in which many feral cats live. People don't desire cats rounded upwards and killed. They do want to see cat populations stabilized and often appreciate when some of the behaviors manifested by intact cats are brought into check. TNR makes nifty public policy—it is a well considered, balanced approach to helping improve co-existence between outside cats and humans in our shared environment. This is why so many cities are adopting information technology. TNR stabilizes cat populations, greatly reduces the number of calls of concern well-nigh cats that municipalities receive, decreases euthanasia rates at shelters, and saves municipalities money.

Driscoll, Carlos A. et al. "The Taming of the Cat." Scientific American (2009): 71-72.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Donalson, Malcolm Drew. The Domestic Cat in Roman Civilisation. The Edwin Mellen Printing, Lewiston, New York: 1999.
Ibid.
Weir, Harrison. Our Cats and All Near Them. Fanciers' Gazette, London: 1892.
Stall, Sam. 100 Cats Who Changed Civilization. Quirk Books, Philadelphia: 2007.
Bradshaw, John W.S., The Evolutionary Ground for the Feeding Behavior of Domestic Dogs (Domestic dog) and Cats (Felis catus), 136(seven) J Nutrition (2006).
Rainbolt, Dusty. "The Best Idea," True cat Fancy. (Baronial 2010): thirty-31.
Grier, Katherine C. Pets in America: A History. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Loma: 2006.