History of Cats – Part 1

Posted by Jeanne on May 11, 2009

Astonishingly, little is known about the history of the cat. While her path has paralleled man’s for thousands of years, he has noted few milestones in their journey together. For this, it seems reasonable to blame the cat. Man has always been a fairly close observer of the world around him and an incurable diarist. If the ancestral cat does not appear in cave drawings or on clay tablets, it is very possibly because then, as now, she walked alone and seldom came when called. Out of sight, out of mind.

There is an Arab myth that the cat came into being on Noah’s Ark when one of the two lions sneezed and the first feline leaped out of his nose. As myths go, this is plausible enough, except that there is no suggestion as to how the premier cat managed to perpetuate the race.

Somewhat more scientific opinion holds that the cat became cat about 40 million years ago. She was not the cat we know today, but she was beginning to be. And, she had already come a long way from her starting point: Miacis, a weasel-like creature of the Eocene epoch (40 to 60 million years ago), who is also responsible for bears, raccoons, hyenas, dogs, and civets – an oddly assorted lot that is not even on speaking terms today.

Cats developed from the civet side of the family and are also distant cousins of one of the most fearsome beasts of all time, the saber-toothed tiger. Smilodon, the sabertooth, was a 14-foot engine of destruction with curving, six-inch fangs and a mean temper, who strode the earth for half a million years. Since he was padding around throughout the period in which the early apes learned to stand erect and become men, it is possible that he had much to do with the still-lingering human fear of cats.