Domestic Cats
Common Name: Domestic Cat, House CatKingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata (Vertebrata)
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Felidae
Genus: Felis
Species: catus
Misc.:One of the most popular pets of all times, there is currently more than 100 million animals in existence worldwide. Humans spend more than $1.5 billion dollars per year feeding their feline companions, and more than $200 million per year on cat litter!
There are more than 30 different breeds of domestic cat and it is believed that all originated from the African Wildcat. Domestication is thought to have occurred more than 4000 years ago in Egypt, and originally occurred for religious purposes.
The expression that most aptly describes the difference between the canine companion versus the feline companion is "My dog thinks he’s human, my cat thinks he’s god".
S
ize and Appearance: Almost impossible to
describe, the domestic cat comes in a wide variety of colors and coat lengths.
There are longhaired breeds like the Persian, and cats with virtually no hair
like the Mexican Hairless. There are even cats with almost no tail at all like
the Manx cat, or very short legs like the Munchkin. They can be as varied in
size, ranging from 5 pounds all the way up to more than 20.
Habitat: Everywhere, mostly associated with human dwellings. Sadly, due to the irresponsibility of man, there are now feral populations of domestic cats everywhere.
Distribution: Worldwide.
Reproduction and Offspring: Females tend to come in heat 3-4 times per year, and after a gestation of 63-66 days they produce litters of 1-8 kittens, most commonly 3-5. They weigh 3-4 ounces at birth, and their eyes open between 7-20 days. They learn to walk around 9-15 days, eat solid food at 4 weeks and are weaned between 8-10 weeks. Independence is around 6 months, with sexual maturity being reached around 10-12 months.
Social System and Communication: Solitary by nature, yet in areas with abundant food sources, they establish a social organization and hierarchies and tolerate each other quite well.
Hunting and Diet: Outdoor and feral cats prey on a variety of small mammals and birds, including mice, rats, squirrels, gophers, moles, shrews, hares and rabbits. As for birds, they prefer sparrows, starlings, robins, doves, and ground nesting birds like grouse, quail and pheasants. Cats will also include grass and other vegetation as part of their diet. Fish, insects and domestic chickens may also be taken.
Principal Threats: Because of their ability to survive so well and reproduce in large numbers, cats have become nuisances in areas of human populations. Each year, hundreds of thousands of unwanted or abandoned cats are euthanised here in the United States alone. Because humans are also irresponsible in their keeping of pets and do not spay and neuter, the number of unwanted kittens is astronomical, adding to the numbers of euthanised animals each year. Keeping animals as outdoor cats invites thousands of cats to be killed by automobiles each year, or by other predators.
How Did Cats Come To Live Among Us?
June 28, 2007 (HealthDay News) -- Painstaking genetic research shows that the cat first became domesticated soon after humans began farming and building the first civilizations, somewhere in the ancient Near East.
And, in typical feline fashion, the decision to take up residence was theirs.
"Cats weren't domesticated on purpose, they just kind of invited themselves in," said study lead author Carlos Driscoll, a doctoral fellow at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. He conducted the research while at the U.S. National Cancer Institute's Laboratory of Genomic Diversity, in Frederick, Md.
By now, the world's Fluffys and Sylvesters have planted their paws firmly across the globe. But these millions of cats appear to share a common ancestor, according to researchers reporting in the June 29, 2007 issue of Science.
Driscoll's team used genetic material gathered from cats worldwide to distinguish wild breeds from domesticated cats and hybrids, and to help determine when and where domestication first occurred.
"Cat domestication became complete by about 3,600 years ago, although the process probably began much earlier," Driscoll said. "It probably began with the origins of agriculture, which was about 12,000 years ago."
As farmland in the Fertile Crescent (modern-day Iraq) kept humans rooted in one locale, the first cities grew.
"Cats are very adaptable, and they adapted themselves to this new environment," Driscoll said.
Still, outside of their talent for eating mice and rats, felines weren't of any obvious value to humankind -- not like pigs, goats and cattle, which people worked hard to domesticate.
Instead, cats likely won humans over with a charm offensive, Driscoll said.
"Cats are nice. They tame down well, and there was just no reason for people not to like them," he said. As cats started to hang around cities and homes, "they were tolerated and encouraged," he added. It appears to have been the perfect plan, since the house cat now outranks the dog as the world's most populous pet.
The NCI study drew on genetic material from 979 domestic cats found "in Scotland, down though Cape Town, and all the way to Mongolia and lots of places in between," Driscoll said. The researchers also sampled the DNA of the world's remaining pockets of truly wild cats: Felis silvestris silvestris in Europe; Felis s. lybica in Africa and the Near East; Felis s. ornata in Central Asia; Felis s. cafra from the Sahara desert, and Felis s. bieti from the Chinese desert.
Prior to this work, specialists in feline evolution had based much of their theories on the archaeological and paleontological record. But, Driscoll said, cats' bones and other remains can only tell scientists so much. "There's actually very little physiological difference between wild cats and domestic cats," he said. "It's very difficult to tell them apart from their bones."
The common house cat also varies little in behavioral terms from its wilder cousins, he said. "Just by knowing how [house] cats can survive in the wild, you can tell they're not very much changed from their wild ancestors," Driscoll said. "They hunt just as well as a wild cat, and they breed even more prolifically."
Based largely on the archaeological record, some experts had speculated that the domestication of the cat occurred in separate places at separate times, giving rise to distinct lineages around the world.
But the new gene study tells a different tale.
"All [domestic] cats are related to one another, and they all come from the same place, and that's the Near East" Driscoll said. Today's domestic cats probably all descend from the wild cat native to the area, Felis s. lybica.
Looking much farther back into the record, Driscoll and his colleagues also discovered that the various lineages of wild cat began branching off from a common ancestor, Felis silvestris, more than 100,000 years ago -- much earlier than was originally assumed.
The findings are more than an historical curiosity. "Of the 36 or 37 species of cat, all of them are threatened or endangered except for the domestic cat. There's a real conservation aspect of this work," Driscoll pointed out. That's because one big problem facing the world's wild cats is their tendency to breed with feral relatives of nearby domestic cats.
The new findings "give us more evidence for a genetic basis to differentiate wild cats from domestic cats and the hybrids of the two," explained Bill Swanson, director of animal research at the Cincinnati Zoo. "So, if you are working to conserve wild cats, it gives you a way to determine if that population is genetically pure or if there have been domestic cat genes incorporated into that population," he said.
Interbreeding is a particular problem for European varieties, such as the Scottish wildcat, a focus of Driscoll's work in the field.
That the gene work was carried out at the National Cancer Institute points to its importance for human health, as well.
"Cats are great models for human genetic disease," Driscoll explained. "Things like retinal atrophy, for example. The Laboratory of Genomic Diversity is interested in that. They're interested in making the cat a better 'model.' This is a kind of genetic background check on the cat."
More information
Find out more about cat genome research at the NCI Laboratory of Genomic Diversity:
http://home.ncifcrf.gov/ccr/lgd/comparative_genome/
catgenome/whythecat.asp
http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/
hscout/2007/06/28/hscout606011.html
See why cats land on their feet in this interesting video.
Information reprinted With Permission from Feline Facts
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Voice talent by Bonnie-Jean Creais 2006