The cat ( Felis catus ), also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felines and felids, is a small carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and its ability to hunt vermin and household pests. It has been associated with humans for at least 9,500 years and is currently the most popular pet in the world.
A skilled predator, the cat is known to hunt over 1,000 species for food. It can be trained to obey simple commands. Individual cats have also been known to learn on their own to manipulate simple mechanisms, such as doorknobs and toilet handles. Cats use a variety of vocalizations and types of body language for communication, including meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling, squeaking, chirping, clicking, and grunting. They are also bred and shown as registered pedigree pets. This hobby is known as cat fancy.
Until recently the cat was commonly believed to have been domesticated in ancient Egypt, where it was a cult animal. A study in 2007 found that the lines of descent of all house cats probably run through as few as five self-domesticating African Wildcats (Felis silvestris lybica) circa 8000 BC, in the Near East. The earliest direct evidence of cat domestication is a kitten that was buried with its owner 9,500 years ago in Cyprus.
Nomenclature and etymology
The word cat derives from Old English catt , which belongs to a group of related words in European languages, including Welsh cath , Spanish gato , Basque katu , Byzantine Greek kátia , Old Irish cat , German Katze , and Old Church Slavonic kotka . The ultimate source of all these terms is Late Latin catus, cattus, catta "domestic cat", as opposed to feles "European wildcat". It is unclear whether the Greek or the Latin came first, but they were undoubtedly borrowed from an Afro-Asiatic language akin to Nubian kadís and Berber kaddîska , both meaning "wildcat". This term was either cognate with or borrowed from Late Egyptian čaus "jungle cat, African wildcat" (later giving Coptic šau "tomcat"), itself from earlier Egyptian tešau "female cat" (vs. miew "tomcat"). The term puss (as in pussycat) may come from Dutch poes or from Low German Puuskatte , dialectal Swedish kattepus , or Norwegian pus , pusekatt , all of which primarily denote a woman and, by extension, a female cat.
A group of cats is referred to as a "clowder", a male cat is called a "tom" (or a "gib", if neutered), and a female is called a "molly" or "queen". The male progenitor of a cat, especially a pedigreed cat, is its "sire", and its female progenitor is its "dam". An immature cat is called a "kitten" (which is also an alternative name for young rats, rabbits, hedgehogs, beavers, squirrels and skunks). In medieval Britain, the word kitten was interchangeable with the word catling . A cat whose ancestry is formally registered is called a pedigreed cat, purebred cat, or a show cat. In strict terms, a purebred cat is one whose ancestry contains only individuals of the same breed. A pedigreed cat is one whose ancestry is recorded, but may have ancestors of different breeds. Cats of unrecorded mixed ancestry are referred to as domestic longhairs and domestic shorthairs or commonly as random-bred, moggies, mongrels, or mutt-cats.
Taxonomy and evolution
The Felids are a rapidly evolving family of mammals that share a common ancestor only 10-15 million years ago, and include in addition to the domestic cat, lions, tigers, cougars, and many others. Within this family, domestic cats ( Felis catus ) are part of the genus Felis , which is a group of small cats containing seven species. Members of the genus are found worldwide and include the Jungle Cat ( Felis chaus ) of southeast Asia, the African Wildcat ( Felis silvestris lybica ), the Chinese Mountain Cat ( Felis silvestris bieti ) and the Arabian Sand Cat ( Felis margarita ). All the cats in this genus share a common ancestor that probably lived around six million years ago in Asia. Although the exact relationships within the Felidae are still uncertain, both the Chinese Mountain Cat and the African Wildcat are close relations of the domestic cat and are both classed as subspecies of the Wildcat Felis silvestris . As domestic cats are little altered from wildcats, they can readily interbreed. This hybridization may pose a danger to the genetic distinctiveness of wildcat populations, particularly in Scotland and Hungary.
The domestic cat was first classified as Felis catus by Carolus Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae of 1758. However, due to modern phylogenetics, domestic cats are now usually regarded as another subspecies of the Wildcat Felis silvestris . This has resulted in mixed usage of the terms, as the domestic cat can be called by its subspecies name, Felis silvestris catus . Wildcats have also been referred to as various subspecies of F. catus , but in 2003 the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature fixed the name for Wildcats as F. silvestris . The most common name in use for the domestic cat remains F. catus , following a convention for domesticated animals of using the earliest (the senior) synonym proposed. Sometimes the domestic cat is called Felis domesticus , although this is not a valid scientific name.
Cats have either a mutualistic or commensal relationship with humans. However, in comparison to dogs, cats have not undergone major changes during the domestication process, as the form and behavior of the domestic cat are not radically different from those of wildcats and domestic cats are perfectly capable of surviving in the wild. Several natural behaviors and characteristics of Wildcats may have preadapted them for domestication as pets. These traits include their small size, social nature, obvious body language, love of play and relatively high intelligence. All the small Felids may also have an inborn tendency towards tameness.
There are two main models for how cats were domesticated. In one model, people deliberately tamed cats in a process of artificial selection, as they were useful predators of vermin. However, some theorists find this implausible, because there may have been little reward for such an effort: cats do not carry out commands and, although they do eat rodents, other species such as ferrets or terriers may be better at controlling these pests. The alternative idea is that cats were simply tolerated by people and gradually diverged from their 'wild' relatives through natural selection, as they adapted to hunting the vermin found in human settlements.
Anatomy
Domestic cats are similar in size to the other members of the genus Felis , typically weighing between four and five kilograms. However, some breeds, such as the Maine Coon, can exceed 11 kilograms (25 lb). Conversely, very small cats (less than 1.8 kilograms (4.0 lb)) have been reported. The world record for the largest cat is 21.297 kilograms (46.952 lb) (46 lb 15.25 oz). The smallest adult cat ever officially recorded weighed around 1.36 kilograms (3 lb). Cats average about 23–25 centimeters (9–10 in) in height and 46 centimeters (18.1 in) in head/body length (males being larger than females), with tails averaging 30 centimeters (11.8 in) in length.
Cats have 7 cervical vertebrae like almost all mammals, 13 thoracic vertebrae (humans have 12), 7 lumbar vertebrae (humans have 5), 3 sacral vertebrae like most mammals (humans have 5 because of their bipedal posture), and a variable number of caudal vertebrae in the tail (humans retain 3 to 5 caudal vertebrae, fused into an internal coccyx). The extra lumbar and thoracic vertebrae account for the cat's spinal mobility and flexibility. Attached to the spine are 13 ribs, the shoulder, and the pelvis. Unlike human arms, cat forelimbs are attached to the shoulder by free-floating clavicle bones, which allows them to pass their body through any space into which they can fit their heads.
The cat skull is unusual among mammals in having very large eye sockets and a powerful and specialized jaw. Within the jaw, cats have teeth adapted for killing prey and tearing meat. When they overpower prey, a cat delivers a lethal neck bite with its two long canine teeth that insert between two of the prey's vertebrae and sever its spinal cord, causing irreversible paralysis and death. Compared to other felines, domestic cats have narrowly-spaced canine teeth, which is an adaptation to their preferred prey of small rodents, which have small vertebrae. The premolar and first molar together compose the carnassial pair on each side of the mouth, which efficiently shears meat into small pieces, like a pair of scissors. These are vital in feeding, since cats' small molars cannot chew food effectively.
Cats, like dogs, are digitigrades. They walk directly on their toes, with the bones of their feet making up the lower part of the visible leg. Cats are capable of walking very precisely, because like all felines they directly registe
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