How Cats Were Tamed

Posted by Bob Newman

I recently wrote a paper on how to select a cat . I received this remark on that article, “Perhaps the article title should be, How To Get A Cat To Select You. Sofia” This comment got me to thinking that she is precisely right. You may select the cat but the cat takes its time to determine if it wants you. Case in point, I was asked to take a kitten from a friend of mine. I  called her Dudette, (opposite of Dude) but she took to my wife and hated me. Go figure that one out.

How did these felines get to be so independent . Here is my theory. I recently saw on TV, that cats were the only animal to domesticate itself. It did this after man went from hunter – gather, to farming, and started storing their grain on their farms. The wild cats saw this as a constant food supply because the grain stored on the farm attracted mice, rats and birds. Thus these cats started staying around man , not in the household, but around the farm.

Man saw no need to chase the cat away because it was doing man a favor by eating the rodents and birds that ate man’s grain. In addition man so no need to bring the cat into the home because they had the dog to take care of the rodents in the home. Therefore, the cat remained outside till sometime around the time of the Egyptians, they were brought. This was done by the Egyptians to control rodents in the temples. Plus they were revered as gods or goddesses, and if you killed a cat it was punishable by death,

Being outside for all of those years and being allowed to be close to man , but not controlled by man till the Egyptians brought them in, made the cat very independent. The accepted position on why cats are independent is that they are solitary animals and hunt by them self. This may be true for most types of cat but what about the lion. Where there is one lion there are usually more .

 

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