Cats. Either you love them, or you do not. If you do not, apart from reasons of allergies, I do not trust you. But I wouldn't want to have a sneezing fit, either, if I were allergic.
Fortunately, I am not, and have had cats my entire life, or at least since I was four and had to be taught how to be gentle to the wee cat. She grew fast, and then she was the one to let me know if I was being rude to her, by voluminous slaps of claws to the face of young me. That's good teaching. Teachers in public schools should be given Freddy gloves and be allowed to do the same thing. But where did our relationships to these creatures develop, and how? Well, imagine a really bad David Attenborough voice as we run through the history of how we got here.
The Beginning
About 12,000 years ago, ancestors of modern cats started showing up in the Fertile Crescent, or what we'd call Iraq these days. They hung around to catch the rodents that were a menace to grain repositories. We were good with this. Eventually, we started embracing them as welcome companions in agriculture, as having a tiny murder machine handle the rats is preferable to trying to hit them with a hammer, as an adult human who is pissed at rats. If you've ever tried to kill a rat with a blunt instrument, you know what I mean. They are fast, and they are assholes. Let the cat deal with this rodentary bullshit.
Next Steps
A thousand years or so passed, and we became cool with the little fuckers even moreso. In ancient Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), people had genuine affection for them after the development of what we call a "commensal relationship," which is just fancy-pants words for "yeah, they started voluntarily kicking it with humans, to mutual benefit." The word "commensal" comes from the Latin roots of "com," meaning "sharing," and "mensa," (not meaning those assholes in that snob group that kicked me out after I posted an essay about the word "grundle" on their forum, and refunded my membership fees), but "table." So, people shared a table with a cat. More likely, the cat just jumped on it when you were takin' a leak, tried to eat your supper, and as a species we were like...well, okay, I guess.
The Spread
No, I do not mean some sort of cat-related charcuterie board, but the way cats made their path through the world. People back in the Neolithic times realized their value before farming was even a thing in Europe. Fuckers be building Stonehenge, but never saw a cat before? Merchants would take cats by land or sea, to wherever they were trying to trade with foreign lands. That is how cats made their way out of the Mideast and into Europe. When the Europeans saw those fuzzy fuck-butts, they wanted more! Can you imagine riding a horse from the Mideast to Europe to interact with stone-age fools with a cat on your shoulder? That is essentially what they did. The wild species of cats from the Fertile Crescent eventually encountered some of the reclusive species from the North and interbred, creating something more like what we recognize today. Trade between the crescent and China often included a free cat with a business deal. The Chinese were more than happy to have that value-added cat on top of their pile of genie lamps.
Tributes
There is an archaeological record of cats, recorded by humans, as cats are not really the world's best archaeologists, nor documentarians. The oldest confirmed record is from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, which is currently a disputed territory wherein the Greeks and the Turks both think it's theirs, and get into spats over it. Some 2/3rds of the population are Greeks, and 1/3rd are Turks. However, they all like cats. You would think that would mean there would be some bonding over that, but nah, they slap each other around and bisected the island into Greek half and Turk half. Cats are free to travel to any side. Anyhow, all weird international politics aside, the earliest known formal burial of a cat was in the town of Shillourokambos, which is pronounced "shi-loo-roh-kam-bos," and I can't even get my mouth to say that without having a seizure. However, there was indeed a cat buried alongside a human about 9,500 years ago. There was also a figurine of a human with a cat's head nearby. The Turks even had their own shit going, as archeological records from 5,000 years ago have many small sculptures of women holding cats, which were fairly recently recovered from a scientific dig site. Why just women? Guys, get your cat game going.
Egypt
We know about the Egyptians and their love of cats, but how did that come to be? Well, archaeologists found evidence to say that they started to domesticate cats as early as the pre-dynastic (before pharaohs were a thing) period of their history, about 6,000 years ago. They took the species known as a "jungle cat" or "reed cat" and made them friends. That whole commensal thing was then writ large when humans and cats started getting along. After the Predynastic Period and the pharaohs happened, cats were elevated to nearly holy status. The god Bastet was the goddess of cats, and was a lithe human with a cat's head. I'm seeing a theme here. Cats were the most mummified creatures in ancient Egypt, besides humans.
Modern Times
There are many professional cat organizations that classify breeds and specify what characteristics they must have to be a certain breed. Can you imagine that being your job? Professional cat inspector? I dunno about that as a career path. Currently, there are about 50 recognized breeds of cat in circulation today. Tabbies in particular are stated to be of the stock of ancient Egypt, as they painted their cats as having stripes like a tabby. A papered breed like a Scottish fold (ach!) or a Russian blue (blyat!) is quite expensive, so most people settle for "this little nutsack that's been hanging out in Steve's garage and needs a home." That's where I got mine. When I take her to the vet, they ask what breed, and I say "cat comma generic."
Stay safe, pet your cat for me, do not feed them Twizzlers, and enjoy life!
-Wombstretcha
Wombstretcha the Magnificent is not a pharaoh, but a cat enthusiast, nevertheless, a Twizzler fan, writer, and retired rapper from Portland, OR. He can be found at his website, Wombstretcha.com, on Twitter/X/whatever as @Wombstretcha503, and on MeWe and (begrudgingly) Facebook, as "Wombstretcha the Magnificent."
