Domestication of the cat

The domestication of the cat can be traced back to Near Eastern and Egyptian populations of the African wildcat, Felis lybica, from which emerged the domestic cat(F. catus). Both belong to the Felis lineage of the family Felidae, which is thought to have first diversified around 13 to 12 million years ago. Several investigations have shown that all domestic varieties of cats come from a single lineage of F. lybica, although early interactions between wildcats and Neolithichuman settlements occurred across a broad geographic range.

Originating in the Near East, the first domestic cats spread from the ancient world via maritime trade as well as the Silk Road, and later worldwide through European colonization. A separate but ultimately unsuccessful domestication of leopard cats in ancient East Asia demonstrates that prolonged proximity to humans does not inevitably lead to domestication.

The domestication process was protracted and geographically complex, rather than being a single discrete event. The earliest interactions between wildcats and humans began as commensal, as cats were drawn to early agricultural settlements due to their thriving rodent populations.

Cats may be considered to be only partially domesticated; unlike most domestic animals, they were never subject to strong selective breeding, and can therefore be observed to retain some of the behavior of their wild ancestors.

Advances in paleogenomics and the sequencing of ancient nuclear DNA has greatly helped revise the history of ancient cats, which could otherwise be hard to decipher due to ancient hybridization between morphologically similar wild species.