The Cat(Felis Catus) is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family felidae and is often referred to as the domestic cat to distinguish it from the wild members of the family. A cat can either be a house cat, a farm cat, or a feral cat, the latter ranges freely and some cats avoids human contact. Domestic cats are valued by humans for companionship and their abilty to kill rodents. there is about 60 cat breeds are recognized by various cat registries.
The cat is similar in anatomy to the other felid species: it has a strong flexible body, quick reflexes, sharp teeth, and retractable claws adapted to killing their prey. Its night vision and sharp sense of smell are well developed. Cat communication includes vocalizations like meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling, and grunting as well as cat-specific body language. A predator that is most active at dawn and dusk (crepuscular), the cat is a solitary hunter but a social species. It can hear sounds too faint or too high in frequency for human ears, such as those made by mice and other small mammals. Cats also secrete and perceive pheromones.
Female domestic cats can have kittens from spring to late autumn, with litter sizes often ranging from two to five kittens.
Domestic cats are bred and shown at events as registered pedigreed cats, a hobby known as cat fancy. Population control of cats may be effected by spaying and neutering, but their proliferation and the abandonment of pets has resulted in large numbers of feral cats worldwide, contributing to the extinction of entire bird, mammal, and reptile species.
It was long thought that cat domestication began in ancient Egypt, where cats were venerated from around 3100 BC, but recent advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that their domestication occurred in Western Asia around 7500 BC.
As of 2021, there were an estimated 220 million owned and 480 million stray cats in the world. As of 2017, the domestic cat was the second most popular pet in the United States, with 95.6 million cats owned and around 42 million households own at least one cat. In the United Kingdom, 26% of adults have a cat with an estimated population of 10.9 million pet cats as of 2020.
History
Around 12 million years ago – Prehistoric times.
During prehistoric times, distant ancestors of the African wildcat roamed the savannah in search of food to eat.
9000-4000 BC – Ancient Egypt
In Ancient Egypt, a time when pharaohs rule the land, the African wildcat enters towns looking for food. They find mice to hunt in the grain stores and for the first time, begin to live alongside humans.
Around 2000 BC
Some African wildcats evolve to become domesticated, living with humans quite happily. The Ancient Egyptians believe that cats are lucky, especially as they keep the snakes away!
1000 BC
Domesticated cats are sold across the world in secret. Many cats live in India and across the whole of Asia.
400 AD – The Roman Empire
Ancient Rome, a powerful and important civilisation, is now getting bigger. The Romans introduce cats to Europe. They think of them as sacred animals and let them wander freely around the city’s holy temples.
1400s- Medieval Europe
Cats are no longer sacred animals. Instead, they are associated with witchcraft and treated badly. Those who own cats are considered to be witches and usually burned alive.
1700s – New America
Adventurers discover the Americas, and with it, a huge plague of rats! Cats are sent across on large ships to control the problem and become popular with the American people.
1800s – Victorian Britain
During Victorian times, cats become popular pets in Britain. Sadly, cats are still cruelly mistreated and abandoned and many live on the streets.
1914-1918 – First World Wars
Cats became heroes, serving in the First World War. They have important jobs, like sniffing out poisonous gas on the battlefield and controlling rats on war ships.
1927 – The beginning of Cats Protection
As cruelty is still a problem, Cats Protection is created to help teach people about how to look after cats. They also begin to home unwanted cats, placing them in happy homes with new owners.
Today
Cats are one of the most popular pets. There are all lot of them in homes across the whole world! Although the African wildcat looks different to our pet cats, they share some of the same behaviours even today – from hunting and sleeping to the need to be alone.
Hunting Abilities
Like their wild relatives, domestic cats are natural hunters able to stalk prey and pounce with sharp claws and teeth. They are particularly effective at night, when their light-reflecting eyes allow them to see better than much of their prey. Cats also enjoy acute hearing. All cats are nimble and agile, and their long tails aid their outstanding balance.
Communication
Cats communicate by marking trees, fence posts, or furniture with their claws or their waste. These scent posts are meant to inform others of a cat's home range. House cats employ a vocal repertoire that extends from a purr to a screech.
Sense
•> Vision
Cats have excellent night vision and can see at only one-sixth the light level required for human vision. This is partly the result of cat eyes having a tapetum lucidum, which reflects any light that passes through the retina back into the eye, thereby increasing the eye’s sensitivity to dim light. Large pupils are an adaptation to dim light. The domestic cat has slit pupils, which allow it to focus bright light without chromatic aberration. At low light, a cat’s pupils expand to cover most of the exposed surface of its eyes. The domestic cat has rather poor color vision and only two types of cone cells, optimized for sensitivity to blue and yellowish green; its ability to distinguish between red and green is limited. A response to middle wavelengths from a system other than the rod cells might be due to a third type of cone. This appears to be an adaptation to low light levels rather than representing true trichromatic vision.
•> Hearing
The domestic cat’s hearing is most acute in the range of 500 Hz to 32 kHz. It can detect an extremely broad range of frequencies ranging from 55 Hz to 79,000 Hz. It can hear a range of 10.5 octaves, while humans and dogs can hear ranges of about 9 octaves. Its hearing sensitivity is enhanced by its large movable outer ears, the pinnae, which amplify sounds and help detect the location of a noise. It can detect ultrasound, which enables it to detect ultrasonic calls made by rodent prey. Recent research has shown that cats have socio-spatial cognitive abilities to create mental maps of owners’ locations based on hearing owners’ voices.
•> Smell
Cats have an acute sense of smell, due in part to their well-developed olfactory bulb and a large surface of olfactory mucosa, about 5.8 square centimetres (29⁄32 square inch) in area, which is about twice that of humans. Cats and many other animals have a Jacobson’s organ in their mouths that is used in the behavioral process of flehmening. It allows them to sense certain aromas in a way that humans cannot. Cats are sensitive to pheromones such as 3-mercapto-3-methylbutan-1-ol, which they use to communicate through urine spraying and marking with scent glands. Many cats also respond strongly to plants that contain nepetalactone, especially catnip, as they can detect that substance at less than one part per billion. About 70–80% of cats are affected by nepetalactone. This response is also produced by other plants, such as silver vine (Actinidia polygama) and the herb valerian; it may be caused by the smell of these plants mimicking a pheromone and stimulating cats’ social or sexual behaviors.
•> Taste
Cats have relatively few taste buds compared to humans (470 or so versus more than 9,000 on the human tongue). Domestic and wild cats share a taste receptor gene mutation that keeps their sweet taste buds from binding to sugary molecules, leaving them with no ability to taste sweetness. Their taste buds instead respond to acids, amino acids like protein, and bitter tastes. Cats also have a distinct temperature preference for their food, preferring food with a temperature around 38 °C (100 °F) which is similar to that of a fresh kill and routinely rejecting food presented cold or refrigerated (which would signal to the cat that the “prey” item is long dead and therefore possibly toxic or decomposing).
•> Whiskers
The whiskers of a cat are highly sensitive to touch. To aid with navigation and sensation, cats have dozens of movable whiskers (vibrissae) over their body, especially their faces. These provide information on the width of gaps and on the location of objects in the dark, both by touching objects directly and by sensing air currents, they also trigger protective blink reflexes to protect the eyes from damage.
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