Cat Domestication – Caused Their Independence

Domestication of Cats

I researched an article on how to select a cat. I received this comment on that article, “Perhaps the article title should be, How To Get A Cat To Select You. Sofia” This   got me to wondering that she is exactly proper. 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 did this, named her Dudette, (opposite of Dude) and she took to my wife and hated me . Go figure   .

How did cats get to be so independent . Here is my theory. I recently saw a program on the nature channel , 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 never-ending food supply because the grain stored on the farm attracted mice, rats and birds. Thus cats stayed in the barn close to the stored grain

Man saw no need to chase the cat away because it was doing man a favour by eating the bird and rodents 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. The feline stayed outside till around the time of the Egyptians, who brought inside. This was done by the Egyptians to control rodents in the temples . Plus they were revered as goddesses or god , and if you killed a cat it was punishable by death,  So the domestication of cats occured about this time, if you want a true date, ask the cat.,

Being outside for thousands of years but being  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. You see one lion and there are usually more.

This is my story on the domestication of cats and I am sticking with it.