Conference misery::feline_v1

171.0. "Origins" by PEN::KALLIS () Fri Nov 08 1985 15:42

	Almost everybody has some awareness about the beginnings of cats, but
for those whose understanding is a little hazy, a few highpoints.
	The cat, as we know it, descended from a common ancestor that pro-
duced dogs and bears as well as felines.  Among the cats, the current crop
are leaping/pouncing types (the sabertooth "tiger" by contrast was one who
stabbed prey with the tusklike upper canines).
	The _feline_ ancestor of the housecat apparently derives from a small
desert cat, probably very close to or identical with the Kaffir Cat of the Lib-
yan desert.  
	The housecat was first domesticated in Egypt, and was revered as an
animal sacred to the goddess, Bast [Bastet, Ubasti, Phast are all variants;
someone once suggested that the word "puss" for "cat" was a corruption of
the name Phast).  The Egyptian cat named itself: the ancients called it "mau,"
close to the modern "meow."  In some Oriental cultures, "Mao" means "cat";
apparently, it's a logical derivation.
	The cat was so revered that it was a crime punishable by death to 
kill one, either deliberately or by accident.  If a cat died, it was treated
as any other member of the family, and was mummified.  A cat was buried
either in a bronze cat-shaped container or a sarcophagus-like coffin.  Often,
cats were buried with mummified mice to be food in the afterworld (Tuat, 
which was not a place of torture, nor a heaven, but more or less like the
current life, if a bit pleasanter).
	A mourning Egyptian shaved off his or her eyebrows.  If wealthy enough,
the head of the family brought his deceased cat to Tell-Bast (Bubastis) to be
interred at the great temple of Bast with thousands of other favored cats.
	It was a capital crime to smuggle cats from ancient Egypt, but cats
were so valuable as rodent-catchers in the ancient world that they were
smuggled out anyway.  As they spread through Europe, they happily interbred
with the local wildcats (such as the Scottish Silvester's Cat, which looks
for all the world like a large striped tabby, but don't try to pet one[!]),
eventually producing the many different-looking domestic breeds we know today
(outside of the deliberatekly-bred types like Himilayans).

Steve Kallis, Jr.