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Did you know there are 600 million cats in the world today? How did they end up on our laps? Learn about the history of cats and more about our favorite pets.
Origin and history of cats. After the nonavian dinosaurs became extinct, mammals became the dominant life forms. The first felinelike mammal, Proailurus, evolved about 30 million years ago. It is thought that all true cat species evolved from this small civetlike predator.
The cat (Felis catus), also referred to as domestic cat or house cat, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae. Advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the domestication of the cat occurred in the Near East around 7500 BC.
Always enigmatic, the cat has sometimes been mistrusted by various civilizations but always managed to prove their worth. Although it has been commonly accepted that cats were first domesticated in Egypt 4000 years ago, their history among human beings goes back much further.
The ancient Egyptian reverence for cats is well-known—and well-documented in the archaeological record: scientists found a cat cemetery in Beni-Hassan brimming with 300,000 cat mummies.