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| Cat's Pedigree- All cats belong to the mammalian, carnivorous family known as Felidae or Felids. Around fifty-four million years ago felids began to evolve into miacids- small, tree-climbing creatures that resembled today's marten. Fossil remains however suggest that Felids began exhibiting close similarities to the domestic cats did not appear until roughly around twelve million years ago. Felids can be classified into three genera: Panthera, which includes the lion, tiger, leopard, snow leopard, clouded leopard, and jaguar; Felis, which includes all non-roaring cat except the cheetah; Acinonyx, a Genus awarded to the cheetah because it's claws are not fully retractable. Domestic cats fall under the Genus Felis. |
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| Ancestors- Most researchers believed that the African Wild Cat- a yellow, faintly striped animal somewhat larger than present day felines, is the probable ancestor of the domestic cat. These wild cats are easily tamable, even today. Also, domestic cats have a hearing apparatus like that of the African Wild Cat enabling them to hear very well in wide open spaces, like the desert where the African Wild Cat can be found. Two other varieties may have contributed to the development of the domestic cat, Pallas's cat, a long-coated resident of the steppes in Northern and Central Asia, is believed by some to be the long-haired cat's distant ancestor: and the undomesticated European wild cat may have interbred with domestic cats. |
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When the Cat was Domesticated- It is likely that the cat was domesticated in Egypt, but the probable date of this event is, at best an approximation. The earliest pictorial representation of cats was from the third millennium B.C. , but it is difficult to ascertain whether the cats were wild or domestic. It seemed at about 1600 B.C. cats were fully domesticated. |
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| How the Cat was Domesticated- Almost all zoologists agree with their colleague Paul Leyhausen, who wrote: "There's is no evidence that at any time during its history that the cat's way of life and it's reception into human homesteads wee purposely planned and directed by humans, as was the case with all other domestic animals at least from a very early stage of their association. In every sense the cat domesticated itself- if with some unimagined assistance from man." |
| The Cat Fancy in England- In 1598, the year that Shakespeare published his book Much Ado about nothing, a cat show was held at the St. Giles Fair in England. | |
| The Birth of The Cat Fancy in the U.S.- The cat fancy in the U.S. was born on May 8, 1895, when an Englishman named James T. Hyde organized a cat show in Madison Square Garden in New York. |
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