A Brief History of House Cats - It may be that "nobody owns a cat," but scientists now say the popular pet has lived with people for 12,000 years - "We think what happened is that the cats sort of domesticated themselves" - http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history...
Jan 26, 2013
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When humans were predominantly hunters, dogs were of great use, and thus were domesticated long before cats. Cats, on the other hand, only became useful to people when we began to settle down, till the earth and—crucially—store surplus crops. With grain stores came mice, and when the first wild cats wandered into town, the stage was set for what the Science study authors call "one of the more successful 'biological experiments' ever undertaken." The cats were delighted by the abundance of prey in the storehouses; people were delighted by the pest control.
- Halil
For some reason, however, cats came to be demonized in Europe during the Middle Ages. They were seen by many as being affiliated with witches and the devil, and many were killed in an effort to ward off evil (an action that scholars think ironically helped to spread the plague, which was carried by rats).
- Halil