Cat

The cat, Felis catus, also called the domestic or house cat, is a small meat-eating mammal of the family Felidae and the only member of that family ever domesticated. It hunts alone, chiefly at dawn and dusk, with retractable claws, quick reflexes, hearing keen enough to catch sounds too faint or high for people, and good sight in poor light. Its taming began in the Near East: the earliest sign, a tamed African wildcat buried near a human grave on Cyprus, dates to about 7500 BCE, when wildcats were probably drawn to early farming settlements by their mice. Some 600 million cats now live around the world. Ancient Egypt revered them: Bastet was often shown in cat form and Sekhmet with a cat-like head, the Book of the Dead lets a cat stand for Ra, and dead cats were embalmed and buried at Bubastis and in other great cat cemeteries. The Greeks later gave Bastet’s cat associations to Artemis, and in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Diana takes the shape of a cat. Many cultures hold superstitions about cats, from the bad luck of a black cat crossing one’s path to the belief that cats serve witches as familiar spirits, and ships long carried them as good-luck charms. In Britain, northern Europe and North America, dried cats were often hidden in the fabric of buildings, sometimes alongside witch bottles.