Let's talk about domestic cats (a shortish thread)😺
Firstly, a little about my own furr baby: his name is Billy (translates to cat in Urdu) and is a domestic short hair.
[reply with your own cat photos!] 🐈🐈⬛
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Billy is an outdoor & social cat and I use a GPS tracker to keep track of location, activities and history.
I also wrote my own tool in Python to interact with the GPS tracker and do other cool stuff like call me when he's outside the house.
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The domestic cat (Felis catus) is one of the most recently evolved species within the Felidae family.
Domestic cats are valued by humans for companionship and their ability to hunt rodents. About 60 cat breeds are recognized by various cat registries.
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Cat communication includes vocalizations like meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling and grunting as well as cat-specific body language.
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Co-existence of cats & humans is evident from fossil records from early human settlements, although these have been assumed to be wild cats. Domestication was previously thought to have occurred in Egypt around 3600 years ago as veneration was given to cats in ancient Egypt.
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Skulls of cats found in Egyptian cat burial grounds have been identified as mainly being of the species Felis sylvestris lybica & it is this wild cat living in Asia and North Africa that is now thought to have been the major ancestor of the modern-day Felis catus.
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The earliest true record of domestication comes from a cat that was found deliberately buried with its owner in a grave in Cyprus, some 9500 years ago, and it is assumed that domestication will have begun some time before this as there were no native cats on Cyprus.
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This is a good video which talks about the domestication of cats: youtube.com/watch?v=CYPJzQpp…
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Cats were worshiped in ancient Egypt and represented in social and religious practices of ancient Egypt for more than 3,000 years. Several ancient Egyptian deities were depicted with cat-like heads such as Mafdet, Bastet and Sekhmet, representing justice, fertility & power.
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Myth & superstitions: Black cats are often a symbol of Halloween/witchcraft. In Western cultures, they have typically been looked upon as a symbol of evil omens, specifically being suspected of being the familiars of witches, or actually shape-shifting witches themselves.
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Most of Europe considers the black cat a symbol of bad luck, particularly if one walks across the path in front of a person, which is believed to be an omen of misfortune & death.
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Another one that claims to be the oldest photo (but identified to be taken between 1880-1890).
"The first cat was unaware of what was happening or even of what a camera was, but after the first picture he spread word to its species to ensure no other cat cooperated again."
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Jun 26, 2021 · 11:22 AM UTC
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