A Cat's Tale: A Journey Through Feline History

THE GOLDEN AGE:

CATS IN PREHISTORY AND ANCIENT EGYPT

We cats have been allies to humankind for a very long time, and while you have reserved the sobriquet man’s best friend for the dog, I may now provide you reasons to judge differently. In fact, archeological evidence offers hints that felines have been your companions for as long if not longer than canines—or to put it this way, the partnership between cats and humans is older than currency, older than man’s use of metals, and older even than written language. It dates to the very foundation of civilization itself, and we might reasonably argue that without our assistance, your civilization may not have gotten very far. Human pride is such that you assume this is bluster on my part. But consider the view of your great ancestors in the matter, being so thankful for our presence that they believed us to be representatives of deities. We have arrived in the glory days, my friends, when humans and cats together marched from the most humble of beginnings to heights undreamt.

These early feline companions were descended from Felis silvestris lybica, a common wildcat found in the Near East and North Africa. Only slightly larger than a modern domestic cat and sporting a tawny coat with brindled markings, our great-grandfather many times removed would not be too terribly different in appearance from a tabby such as myself. But despite all the virtues we domestic cats possess, I am forced to acknowledge that comparing us to little Felis pays him a grave disservice. He was as cunning and quick as only a wildcat can be, and with a strength that greatly belied his size. You humans who are impressed by a modern cat’s ability to bring in a lizard now and again would find Felis possessed of skills that would put ours to shame.

But why wouldn’t Felis be a fierce and dangerous hunter? There’s something about thirteen million years of evolution that tends to leave a cat pretty well adapted to its environment. And we house cats in turn claim a direct line of descent from him, which makes humans far our juniors. Homo sapiens is a mere three hundred thousand years old in comparison, so pardon us if we seem periodically snooty, but we’re well aware that we have been tested and crafted by time. And to counter a common misconception on your part, I’ll have you know that big cats evolved only three million years ago, so any of you who consider domestic cats to be a lion or tiger cut down to size need to think again. When it comes to felines, it was the small who begat the large.

Another issue you may need to rethink is the idea that humans domesticated us. Sorry, the truth is we domesticated ourselves. Felis did not need your help to survive, and as he was no dummy, you certainly would not have succeeded in tricking or coercing him into accepting your company. Rather, he willingly entered into your communities, and on recognizing that a mutually beneficial relationship could exist between felines and humans, he agreed to stay. In fact, rather than the term domestication, I would prefer we use partnership. As I’ve noted in our introduction, isn’t it much closer to the truth, after all? But let me tell you the story and we’ll see if you don’t concur.

It was during the tail end of prehistory, the Neolithic, when humans in Mesopotamia began to practice agriculture, and this development would have many consequences. For one thing, it required that you cease your wandering ways and establish the first towns and villages. Oh, how your pride would sink if you could see those conclaves of huts constructed of mud and twigs—why, you were practically living in grandiose beaver lodges! But I do give credit where it is due: you tended your crops brilliantly, establishing such a surplus of grain that it would alter not just your own evolutionary path but those of all the species around you.

Among them were rats and mice, crafty types whose nefarious doings we will hear much of in our story. Scavenging from your excess was easy pickings, and they soon began gravitating around your dwellings. In typical human fashion you hadn’t thought things through. You had considered with great astuteness the growing of crops, but nary did you ponder if anyone else might want to eat them! And without any plan, you were caught off guard. Silent, nimble, and scarcely seen by your eyes, the greedy little vermin took what they wished and often spoilt the rest.

So you despaired. But not for long—because little Felis offered a solution. If you didn’t want those rodents, he was glad to take them off your hands. They were an important food source for him, you see, and since there was an undeniable advantage in having his quarry massed in predictable locations, he began to congregate around your settlements as well. Of course, he was initially wary of your kind. And to be fair, you can’t fault him. Consider yourselves through feline eyes. You are big—huge, even! You lumber about on two feet in a manner that seems to the more dexterous species to be nothing but clumsy, and, even more off-putting, you’re loud. I won’t go so far as to call you boorish, but you must admit you lack subtlety when it comes to dominating the world around you.

But little Felis had no lack of fortitude. He dared approach your homes in search of prey, and in the process found an additional advantage. For your own security you had been eliminating large and dangerous mammals from the outskirts of your villages, and this had the effect of creating a safe haven for smaller predators. This was a place where cats could prosper, Felis realized! In your orbit he became an apex hunter, blessed with an ample supply of game and a limited threat from larger animals. And as he decimated the rodents who had decimated your grain, the foundation for a symbiotic relationship between felines and humans was laid.

Of course, even if each provided benefit to the other, it didn’t mean that the path leading to home and hearth would be trod quickly or easily. Just as Felis was reticent to trust the notoriously unpredictable humans, it’s also a safe bet that prehistoric people were more than a little leery of him. Your great ancestors were well aware that while wildcats were small in stature, they were well equipped with claw and tooth. If Felis could eviscerate a rat with a single swipe, what he might do to a human hand?

But the relationship prospered in spite of such trepidations. After all, the last thing you wanted was for us to leave, lest you again become inundated with rodents. So if we hunted too well, you began to leave scraps of food from your tables for us, to ensure that we stayed nearby. Cuttings of prepared meat would have seemed a peculiar meal to a prehistoric cat, but then again they were tasty, and the fact that they miraculously appeared made life all the easier, so Felis accepted the offer. I doubt either could see it, the process occurring too slowly, but human and feline were becoming increasingly reliant upon each other. A cat’s affections are of course won slowly, and in the case of little Felis, it would have taken the passage of centuries. But as the relationship grew ever closer, the end result was inevitable.

If you will permit a bit of romantic vision, I imagine the historic breakthrough occurring on the outskirts of a ramshackle village in perhaps Iraq or Syria, some ten thousand years ago. Let us say sometime after midday, with the sun still high after warming the fields. I envision a man looking out toward the brush where the domain of humans officially stops. This is the border of his world, the place beyond which wildness lives, and as he squints into the shadows he sees bright eyes peering back. They are everywhere, hidden among the bushes and branches: dozens of eyes, sparkling green and almond-shaped. He knows of them, he and the other villagers having seen them countless times before. These eyes belong to the ones who prey on the rodents who prey on the crops.

Then a sudden flurry, and amid the scampering of paws the eyes disappear. Just as they always seem to when the man catches a glimpse of them. But this time there is something different. This time … one pair of eyes remains. These eyes are bold, they do not flinch and they do not waiver, instead staring back from the shadows as the man stares into the brush. The man bends low, squaring down on his haunches. Never has he seen the eyes so clearly as now. Slowly, as fear mixes with exhilaration, he reaches his hand forward with an open palm. And just before him, at the very edge of his domain, stands little Felis. Ah, if the humans were curious about the eyes in the shadows, for how many generations had Felis and his kin been curious about the big, loud creatures standing among the fields? And he, equally filled with fear and exhilaration, steels his courage and steps forward, his body emerging from the brush.

The man’s palm now descends. Slowly, slowly, oh so slowly—he knows what those claws can do, and he has no desire to be swatted by them. At the same time, Felis pushes his head upward, and the hand lands gently between the cat’s ears. Just a touch, and then the fingers brush the neck and glide onto the back. Oh, a new sensation! The man’s hand, cracked and callused from his labors, revels in the exultant feeling of the soft, plush fur. And … that will be enough of that! Felis vanishes back into the shadows, and the man’s fingers grasp only emptiness, as the two nervous partners leave their encounter at nothing more than a simple stroke. It ends so quickly, a mere moment in time. Who could have guessed that with such a simple gesture two worlds were forever changed?

Such a scene would have been enacted again and again and again in villages across the Near East and North Africa. As little Felis continued to return to the edge of the brush and his skittishness dissipated, he would stand a little further out from the shadows. And as man returned to the edge of his fields and learned those claws were not meant for him, his own skittishness likewise dissipated and his hand lingered longer. He would then be joined by his kin, and a touch became a caress, which finally became an embrace. Eventually, man invited Felis to enter his domain and make residence. And Felis, grown accustomed to man’s hand and the comfort it provided, overlooked his own independent nature.

What started with the chasing of mice had resulted in the unlikely union of two very different species, and one of the places that union would occur was along the Nile River in northern Africa. For millennia, rushing waters from the depths of the southern jungle had been picking up rich silt and carrying it northward. As the river ebbed and flowed along a four-thousand-mile path to the Mediterranean Sea, it wound through the Sahara Desert, and a land that was otherwise arid and inhospitable was not so on its banks. The silt deposited along this route had carved a lush corridor where plants and animals could thrive. Roving bands of hunters and cattle herders discovered this paradise and made a home of it, and by 4000 BC they began to plant crops and form permanent settlements like their brethren in the Near East.

I don’t doubt that you know the second chapter of their story: the villages they founded prospered and, having been unified as Egypt, stood for three thousand years as the greatest civilization the world had yet seen. But that chapter was still another millennia in the future, and hardly could one have predicted such grandeur from beginnings which were not at all auspicious. Those poor farmers! Their land was good and their bounty plentiful, but their granaries were plagued by an especially troublesome breed of river rat from which they could find no relief. Ah, but who would come to their rescue? Our friend Felis, of course! The little wildcats began to appear on the outskirts of these towns too, hunting down the pernicious Nile vermin and endearing themselves to the hearts of the local farmers.

The bond that developed in this new land was particularly strong, and of all the ancient societies that took us to heart, it was in Egypt that the greatest gratitude for our service was felt. Our partnership with humanity called for you to serve us as much as we served you, but as time passed the people there allowed for the onus of servitude to fall more and more squarely onto mankind. Never forgetting their debt to the felines who had stood by their side at the dawn of their nation, the Egyptians allowed the fortunes of men and cats to become intertwined. And when they stepped forward to the vanguard of civilization, they asked us to walk alongside them, and we remained at their side, soaring to the zenith of feline culture as they soared to the pinnacles of human achievement.

Why was this so, Baba? What spell had cats wrought over the people along the Nile? That we had charmed them was beyond doubt. They were so delighted by our vocalizing skills that they took note and named us accordingly, using miu for male cats and miit for females, becoming the first humans to use words that you would later know as meow. But truth being told, we have charmed any number of humans in any number of countries, and charming behavior alone can account for only so much. Clearly, there was something more at work in Egypt. The people who had taken us into their humble homes anticipated that we would control rodents, but found to their delight that our skills did not stop at rats and mice: we were deadly effective in hunting scorpions, cobras, and vipers as well.

Providing relief from these poisonous intruders not only heightened the sense of debt they felt toward us, it peaked their curiosity. The Egyptians began to pay more attention to our behavior and were shocked to find that felines appeared precognizant. Some cats seemed to know in advance about changes in the weather, others could sense impending earthquakes, and still others would warn their humans of seemingly invisible dangers. Our small size so belied our abilities that the Egyptians began to wonder whether our powers were something beyond natural. Perhaps we had indeed wrought a spell, and they began to conjecture about whether there might be an innate correspondence between felines and magic.

In the Ancient World, magic was no joke, nor was it malevolent. Accepted among all levels of human society, it was considered a transcendent force by which the travails of a chaotic and hostile world might be overcome. Be that as it may, perhaps you hold doubts and look upon the topic with condescension? After all, the abilities the Egyptians had mistaken for magic are easily explained as products of a sensory acuity which in felines is far superior to man’s. Whereas humans will not receive foreboding of a storm until the clouds have gathered, we cats will sense it far in advance due to changes in barometric pressure. Or a stealthy intruder will be seen and heard by us from far off in what to you is total darkness and silence.

And so on and so forth, and in this way we became conceived of as a bulwark against evil. That felines had apotropaic powers was unquestioned, and if a cat chose to favor a particular human, it would thereafter secure that person and his family from harm. But before you judge the Egyptians as simple people, realize that it was not only rational for them in such a time and place to put great stock in our abilities, it was wise to do so. In your modern hubris, you have turned a blind eye to messages from the species around you, but in observing cats closely and by understanding our behavior, the Egyptians did in truth receive some measure of the foresight they desired.

Magical? No, but the effect was nevertheless real, and they increasingly invoked us in rites of protection. They also placed our image on items designed to compel the supernatural, from the tiniest of amulets to the largest ever conceived: the Great Sphinx, history’s most famous guardian figure, matched the head of the pharaoh, Egypt’s divine king, to a gargantuan feline body. Among the potent items we were associated with was the mirror, which was used for something more than vanity back in the day. Polished pieces of flat copper, they could reflect evil and send it back to its source. Nice trick, but to ensure its effectiveness, a mirror needed real power, and thus the trusted image of a cat was often engraved upon the back or handle. We were also depicted on a bronze rattle which the Egyptians named the sistrum. It was considerably more than a musical instrument, however. Its rounded top was symbolic of the womb, and its pointed handle of the phallus. Potent indeed, as shaking it represented the agitation of the elements that governed birth, decay, and rebirth. And the feline standing at the top safeguarded this eternal process.

Think of how times have changed, as nowadays you watch over us, while back then it was we who watched over you. In fact, we so dominated the human psyche that each and every feline represented no less than a metaphor for Creation. This was in accordance with a popular legend that told of the time before time, when all was darkness and nary a living thing existed until the sun god Ra came forth, appearing in the form of the Miu Oa, or Great Tomcat. As the first paw prints trammeled upon the void, he wished for a world to be born into which man could be formed.

How wise Ra was to have chosen his feline form, because another soon appeared to stand in opposition. This rival was named Apophis, and his form was that of a serpent. He was the god of eternal darkness, and it was his wish that all remain as a void. But the Great Tomcat was determined that things should be, and he set upon the snake. How long the primordial battle lasted, no one could say, because even time itself did not yet exist. That it was a fierce battle we can have no doubt, but the Miu Oa vanquished the serpent, and thus was the darkness loosened so that the world and all that would dwell in it were born. Ah, well, I told you the Egyptians valued our ability to hunt snakes! In so doing, we were not just protecting the home, but offering a metaphor for genesis itself.

Creation at the paws of a cat? Baba, this is news to me, you say. But maybe not, because you’re well familiar with another part of the story, which has remained current to this very day. Ah, but you need a hint? The priests of Heliopolis recounted how afterward, Ra, in the form of a tomcat, begat other deities. First came the embodiments of air and water, respectively, who in turn issued forth earth and sky. And these responded with the great gods Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Wait now … how many deities is this? We will allow Ra to count them for