“As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat” (attributed to Ellen Perry Berkeley).

When and how did wild cats become domestic animals? It’s taken scientists fertile crescentmany years to figure this out, due to the similarities in domestic and wild cats’ skeletons. Some clues first came from the island of Cyprus in 1983, when archaeologists found a cat’s jawbone dating back 8,000 years. It seemed highly unlikely that people would have brought wild cats to the island. The search suggested that domestication occurred approximately 8,000 years ago. A few years later, a site thought to be 9,500 years old was found. The site contained a human who had been buried with his cat. This suggests that domestication was at least another 1,500 years earlier.

A study published in the research journal “Science” figured out more about the history of cats based on genetic analyses. This study showed that all domestic cats descended from a Middle Eastern wildcat, felis sylvestris, which literally means “cat of the woods.” Starting in the Middle East, cats were domesticated about 9,500 years ago.

This is a very logical estimate because the first agricultural practices began in the Middle East around that time. The area in which this occurred is called The Fertile Crescent (encompassing modern day parts of West Asia and Northeastern Africa). The Fertile Crescent is where some of the earliest developments in human civilization occurred . Cats were extremely helpful in that time of agriculture because they would chase the crop-eating mice out of the fields.

Grateful humans began to leave out food for the cats in hopes they would return to their farm. This caused cats’ diets to change from mostly mice, snakes, and other rodents to inclusion of grains and different kinds of crops. Once a relationship was formed between the cats and humans, people started to bring their cats along with them to hunt. Cats and humans created a bond many years ago that is still present today. Even back then, people loved their playful and affectionate companions, just as we do now.