Some background before we get to the point!  The ancestor is the "wildcat" of Eurasia and Africa, Felix sylvestris, which avoids humans and still exists in significant numbers across a huge range.   DNA now shows the feline to entail only five subspecies in all (many more have been imagined), spread over Europe (especially Eastern Europe these days but also Iberia and elsewhere), Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.  These are,   Felix sylvestris sylvestris in Europe, F.s. bieti in China, F.s. ornata in Central Asia, F.s. cafra in Africa's southern cone, and F.s. lybica of the Middle East and much of Africa.  (Some wish to say China's F.s. bieti is different enough to be its own separate species, which seems doubtful but is not of concern here.)

All five all very similar and look like a regular tabby cat, though on average they are a bit bigger (at least in Northern climates) and certainly meaner and leaner!

Not only do the above five subspecies look nearly identical, but where their ranges overlap they interbreed, confusing the situation further.  (Typical of the other subspecies argued to exist is F.s. "grampia" of Scotland and once you've got the locals worked up, that kind of thing dies hard.)  In much of the world, many say the wildcat Felis sylvestris is also significantly interbred with house cats, which some regard as their own subspecies Felis sylvestris catus, and others regard as a newer, genuinedly separate species, Felis catus.  (The discipline of taxonomy is filled with varying interpretations and one gets a sense of some subjectivity [like with those Scots!] - but a separate species?  We will rid ourselves of the fanciful Felis "catus" baloney further below!)  

Let a house cat get mixed up with wildcats, by the way, and in just no time the dominant wild instincts and coloration genes take over and soon the offspring will be tabby-looking, like the wild ones.  (If the released house cat is too gaudy, of course, e.g. white, it won't be able to hunt well, and its chances to catch prey, survive, and reproduce will be diminished.)

Okay, but how did they get to be house cats, especially if the still-existing ancestors are so skittish?  The answer is fascinating:  it is based on mutual interest, like the various cleaner fishes of the oceans.  Only here, it is mutual interest owing to changed circumstances. 

In what may be called the Neolithic (or Agricultural) Revolution, supposedly one day around 8000 B.C., humankind learned to silo grain.  This happened (apparently among other places) in the Fertile Crescent (which consists of the Levant plus Mesopotamia (Iraq) and *not* Egypt as frequently misstated), as a pertinent example.   The house mouse had recently arrived there from its native India somehow.  And a highly adaptive creature it is, that noxious house mouse!   Grain (and village trash) brought rodents to human habitation in the Fertile Crescent in numbers, and while humans struggled before the invention of mousetraps, the rodents also attracted a few braver wildcats, those individuals who could overcome their fear of humans, whereas the farmers quickly learned to appreciate the plucky and useful wildcats.   We are talking here about F. s. lybica, the subspecies of wildcat from the Middle East and parts of Africa, known sometimes as the African Wild Cat or more relevantly, Desert Cat.  It indeed tolerates many habitats from arid to moist, but not rain forest. Well, those new-arrival house mice could not compete too effectively against native rodents, so under stress, the adaptive vermin began to afflict the human population right in their dwellings, an environment which native rodents avoided.  (The house mouse remains highly versatile to date by the way; upon arriving on an oceanic island, a population grew larger in size and learned within a few years how to attack in groups huge seabirds that previously had no mammalian predators.)

Felix sylvestris (wildcats) all over have features that appeal to us subconsciously.  Big eyes and rounded foreheads are known to bring out people's nurturing instincts; that's basic psychology.  Over time, those Desert Cat wildcats and people clearly got more used to one another, the wildcats started to accept scraps from the farmers, and at some point they began to cadge treats.   Plus, people must have occasionally found kittens and sometimes tried to raise the adorable things, also reasoning that if wildcats ate rodents in silos and such places, they might even control the maddening house mice invading their dwellings.    And so a few Desert Cats became early house cats, and no longer behaved like typical wildcats, who shun humans (the males living in territories of around 3 sq. km., and females roaming wherever).

The above "domestication" process might have occurred contemporaneously with the other four subspecies in Eurasia and Africa, and there has been a lot of speculation - this is logical as human settlements were expanding in various places.  Experts argued it happened the same way all over; wildcats and people simply jointed forces everywhere.   We now know that that such did not occur, though, and the house mice that stimulated the whole process, by the way, took some two thousand more years to make it across Europe.

DNA tests have been done recently and a report in 2007 revealed that F.s. lybica and the house cat are virtually indistinguishable genetically (Fs. lybica is not nearly so closely related to the other four subspecies as it is to our house cat).  So house cats all came from this one subspecies, and almost certainly from the above events in the Fertile Crescent.  People began to travel with their F.s. lybica-bred house cats, such that the remains of a man and his house cat were found buried together in Cyprus a few years ago from around 7000 B.C., yet wildcats are not native to that island.  The Cyprus discovery is much older than records in Egypt by the way:  you've heard that cats supposedly came from Egypt?  That is a real triumph of imagination over logic; all we know from Egyptians is they made pictures of cats!  That house cats began there is a non-sequitur, a flight of fancy.   Anyway, F.s. lybica-bred house cats soon made it to many lands both as rodent control and as good company, and the other four subspecies did not get tapped for this as there was no need, there being a ready supply of the pre-tamed former.  (Plus taming wildcats is not easy -- I got bitten and scratched badly by a badly frightened house cat three weeks ago and it was blindingly fast: my blood was everywhere before I knew what had happened.)  There is also anecdotal evidence that subspecies such as F.s. sylvestris of Europe may be overall more wary of humans anyway.   And don't be naïve, all of these wildcats are hunted by certain people even now (some countries even have hunting seasons on wildcats):  the felines have long had their reasons to be standoffish.  Rabbit meat sold in the form of otherwise-skinned rabbits at East European markets is still offered with the fury rabbit feet left on, so that customers know they are not being slipped a cat carcass for dinner.

Still, house cats seem so evolved from wildcat/Desert Cat F.S. lybica, so further along, no?  House cats have learned to rub up against their masters when they want food or other attention, for example.  Well, as it turns out, that is a reproduction of pre-existing wildcat behavior.  Don't flatter yourselves; rubbing is a wildcat greeting, scent spreading through glands, and it can be an ordinary wildcat request, such as by a kitten seeking food or attention from its wildcat mother.

Cats are said (by e.g. Wikipedia) to be "self-domesticating," i.e, they chose us, but the above discussion paints a more complicated picture, which makes sense.  It us also debatable whether many of them are domesticated at all:  if a cat goes out from your home, it will certainly hunt and feed in part outside (and probably define territory, engage in fights, and indeed mate if not fixed) - that has to be considered somewhere between wild, feral and maybe somewhat domesticated (see the excellent Scientific American article from last month).   That is not like, say, an aquarium goldfish!  And unlike dogs, house cats revert quickly to typical F. sylvestris behavior and even appearance, if released to the wild.  Domestic dogs stay as dogs indefinitely, such as the tan pariah dogs in India or stray dogs anywhere, and do not at all revert to being wolves.   Cats soon become wildcats.  That is a big difference!

Face it, our house cats have two or three feet in the wild kingdom; they are genetically virtually identical to the Desert Cat subspecies of wildcat, so they simply can't be some new species, Felis catus, however cute they may be!  That anthropocentric idea is ridiculous. Or flip it over: the Desert Cat wildcat subspecies lybica is so close genetically to the other four subspecies that they look and act the same and freely interbreed, but it is even more closely related to the cat in your living room than to them!  So maybe it's right to call house cats F. sylvestris catus, as seems to be the trend, i.e., a sixth subspecies of wildcat.  But are they really even that?   We've just admitted that at most they are taxonomically just another kind of wildcat, after all (and holy smokes for that!) - is it so much a stretch to say that they're just the same old kind of wildcats they've always been, i.e., the Desert Cat (or African Wildcat as sometimes known), F.s. lybica?  

Which would mean, cat lover, that you're living with a cunning desert predator!   If that's not the real truth, the science tells us it's mighty close.  And look, at least you've got yourself one good thing out of Iraq: you're little furry friend!

© J.D. 2009