House cats joined humans in the Near East about 7500 BCE
Felis catus, the domestic cat, is a small obligate carnivore in family Felidae. Archaeology and genetics place early domestication in the Near East around 7500 BCE. Globally valued for companionship and rodent control, cats hear ultrasonic prey rustles and speak in meows, purrs, hisses, and scent marks.
Built for small prey such as mice and rats, the cat has retractable claws, a supple body, fast reflexes, sharp teeth, keen night vision and a good nose. It is a social animal but hunts alone, mostly at dawn and dusk. Besides meows and purrs it trills, growls and grunts, and it both releases and detects pheromones. It learns by watching and solves problems, and it is the only domesticated member of the cat family.
Of an estimated 600 million domestic cats, some 400 million live in Asia, including 58 million in China, with about 73.8 million in the United States and 10.9 million in Britain. Abandoned pets swell feral populations that have driven declines in birds, mammals and reptiles, which is why spaying and neutering matter.
The word may come from Late Latin cattus, first used early in the sixth century, possibly from an African source such as Nubian kaddîska, wildcat; another theory runs back through Germanic to a Uralic word for a female furred animal. Puss appears in English in the sixteenth century, perhaps from Dutch or Low German, and may imitate a sound used to call cats. Males are toms, females queens, and a group can be a clowder or a glaring.
Linnaeus named Felis catus in 1758. A 2007 worldwide genetic survey concluded house cats probably descend from the African wildcat, and in 2017 the IUCN cat specialists ruled the domestic cat a distinct species, keeping Linnaeus's name.
Source: Cat
