A Brief History of Cats (No, Really, It’s Brief)
Its been about 4,000 years since cats have been domesticated. How did humans do it? Why were cats domesticated? Who first domesticated cats? In this article, we will find out all the mysteries to cats.
Hey Marshmallow Bunnies! So, my blog post this week won’t be exactly like the paragraph above, but it will be pretty cool. I studied the brief history of cats from three websites ( first website , second website , third website ) and took notes. I would recommend visiting those websites because I didn’t take all the information from the sites. If you still want to know more, I would recommend this awesome documentary on Netflix, “The Lion In Your Living Room”. It gives so much interesting information, including the kind of cats Vikings probably preferred due to what kinds of cats there are more of in areas that Vikings visited often. Lets get into the blog!
The first recorded instance of cats being “domesticated” is around 4,000 years ago, although cats have probably dealt with humans for much longer. The first known people to own cats is Egyptians, who worshiped them like gods and goddesses. They would give cats a burial (after mummifying them, of course). Killing a cat was punishable by death, along with selling cats outside of Egypt. When a cat would die, the family would shave their eyebrows in a form of mourning. With the fall of the Egyptian empire, it was easier for cats to spread all over the world.
Sadly, in the Middle Ages, cats were associated with dark magic, witchcraft, and the devil. During the Black Death (the really big, widespread plague in 1348 that killed about 50% of the European population), people blamed cats. There was actually an order that said something along the lines of “So, I think the cats are behind this huge plague that I will actually find out later was caused by fleas, landing on rats that infect almost all of Europe, so… just go ahead and kill any cats that you think are spreading the plague for Satan himself. Okay?” So people were killing cats in mass, causing the rat population to skyrocket, allowing more rats to get infected, making the plague kill way more people than if they had just left the cats alone.
After this stopped and people actually liked cats again because they realized that it was stupid to believe that cats were trying to kill them all (they were still wrong, cats are trying to kill us all, just not actively like they thought), they became a popular pet to have. There are now around 90 million cats (in all) in around 34 % of U.S. homes.
That’s all for now Marshmallow Bunnies! This post is really long, so I tried my best on making it entertaining to read. Comment to let me know it I succeeded! Share some of my posts and subscribe for more! (I’ll still make more posts, but I would like to know if there is anyone actually reading my posts, so, yeah…)
~ Virginia
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