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How cats came to rule the earth.
In the time of the dinosaurs, a weasel-like animal called "Miacis" roamed the earth. Most scientists believe that this was the ancestor of today's domestic cats. However, it took another 40 million years before the first actual members of the cat family appeared.
Cats were first domesticated because humans realised that they could be quite handy. In those early days in Egypt, about 3 500 BC, people started growing and harvesting crops. But they had a problem preserving their foodstuffs, because rats, mice and other vermin were quick to catch on to the concept of a free meal. Before long people started to notice that the wildcats in the area were very efficient at decreasing the numbers of these vermin. Soon they started inviting the cats into their neighbourhoods by placing milk-soaked bread, fish heads and other scraps of food to attract them.
It probably took only one person to stroke a cat and hear that magical "purrrr" for the cat to take its rightful throne among humans as much beloved pet.
The domestic cat spread to Europe and the Middle East and later also to Asia, where they were used to protect silkworm cocoons, so vital for the silk industry, from rodents.
Cats had their darkest time during the Middle Ages, when they were associated with the Devil, evil and witchcraft and hundreds and thousands of cats were killed out of fear and ignorance. The destruction of so many cats upset the balance of the rodent population - the main culprits in the bubonic plague transmitted to people by rat fleas.
So, after the "Black Death", Europeans once more began to realise the important role cats had to play in promoting a rodent-free world and cats gradually regained their place in society.
In the 1700s and 1800s traders brought cats to the New World and settlers continued to take their cats with them as they moved to the West.
And that, in a nutshell, is how cats came to rule the world.
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