Domestication of the Cat: How Wildcats Joined Early Farmers

The domestication of the cat began in the Near East around 10,000 years ago, when wildcats started living alongside the first farmers and hunting the rodents drawn to their grain stores. The oldest clear evidence of a close bond between people and cats is a cat buried near a human grave at Shillourokambos on Cyprus, dated to about 7500 BC. Unlike sheep or cattle, cats were never herded or bred for food, and they took a largely self-directed path from wild hunter to household companion.

The wild ancestor

All domestic cats (Felis catus) descend from the African wildcat, Felis lybica, often classified as a subspecies of the wildcat, Felis silvestris lybica. This small, sandy-coloured cat lives across North Africa, the Near East and parts of Arabia, with related forms extending into Central Asia and southern Africa.

In 2007 a genetic study led by Carlos Driscoll analysed nearly a thousand domestic cats and wildcats from Europe, Africa and Asia. It found that domestic cats belonged to the same mitochondrial lineage as wildcats from the Near East, not to the European wildcat, the Chinese desert cat or other relatives. The authors concluded that cat domestication began in the Near East, in the region of the Neolithic Revolution.

The Near Eastern wildcat was well suited to life near people. It is relatively tolerant of human activity, hunts mainly small rodents and is solitary, so it does not need a group hierarchy to survive.

How cats moved in with farmers

Archaeologists generally describe cat domestication as a commensal process. A commensal animal lives alongside humans and benefits from them without at first being deliberately controlled.

When people in the Fertile Crescent began farming, they built permanent villages and stored large amounts of grain, part of the domestication of wheat and barley. The house mouse spread rapidly into these settlements, and wildcats followed the abundant prey.

Cats that were bolder and less fearful of humans could exploit this new environment best. Over many generations, a population of cats that were comfortable around people developed. Farmers probably tolerated them because they reduced pests and may also have valued them as companions. This is why cat domestication is sometimes described as “self-domestication”.

The Shillourokambos burial

The single most important early find comes from Shillourokambos, an early Neolithic village in southern Cyprus. In 2004 a team led by the French archaeologist Jean-Denis Vigne reported a burial dated to about 9,500 years ago, or around 7500 BC.

A human, buried with offerings including polished stone tools, flint, ochre and seashells, lay in a grave. About 40 centimetres away was a small separate pit containing the complete skeleton of a cat, roughly eight months old, laid out in a similar position. The cat appeared to have been buried deliberately at the same time as the person.

The find mattered for two reasons. First, Cyprus had no native wildcats, so cats must have been brought to the island by boat, along with sheep, goats, pigs and cattle carried by the first settlers. Second, burying a cat with a human points to a special relationship, perhaps as a companion animal or a creature of symbolic importance.

The Shillourokambos cat was the size of a wildcat. It was therefore probably tamed rather than fully domestic in the modern sense, but it shows that people and cats had formed close ties very early.

Other early evidence

Small numbers of cat bones are known from early Neolithic sites in the Levant and Anatolia, but it is usually impossible to tell from bones alone whether they come from wild or tamed animals. Cat imagery is also rare in Neolithic art, although some figurines and reliefs may depict felines.

A study published in 2014 described cats at Quanhucun in China, about 5,300 years old, which had eaten millet-fed rodents and perhaps food from people. Later analysis showed that these cats were leopard cats, a different East Asian species. This suggests a separate, short-lived relationship between people and wild cats in China that did not lead to today’s domestic cats.

Cats in ancient Egypt

Egypt became the place most closely associated with cats. Cat burials are known from the Predynastic cemetery at Hierakonpolis, dated to around 3700 BC, including young cats that had been kept in captivity.

By the Middle Kingdom, around 1950 BC, cats appear in tomb paintings, and New Kingdom art often shows them sitting under chairs or joining their owners on hunting trips in the marshes. Cats became linked to the goddess Bastet, whose cult centre was at Bubastis in the Nile Delta. In the Late Period, hundreds of thousands of cats were mummified and offered at temples.

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, described Egyptian households shaving their eyebrows in mourning when a cat died, and noted that dead cats were taken to Bubastis for burial.

The historian Diodorus Siculus, writing in the 1st century BC, reported that anyone who killed a cat in Egypt, even by accident, risked being lynched by an angry crowd. He claimed to have witnessed such an attack on a Roman visitor himself. Whether or not every detail is accurate, these accounts show how strongly Egyptians protected cats by the late first millennium BC.

Egypt’s attitude to cats was not purely affectionate. Many of the mummified temple cats were bred in large numbers and killed young to serve as offerings, a practice revealed by X-ray and scanning studies of the mummies.

The spread of the domestic cat

A major study led by Claudio Ottoni in 2017 analysed ancient DNA from more than 200 cats spanning about 9,000 years. It identified two main waves of expansion.

The first began in south-western Asia with early farmers, as cats with Near Eastern ancestry spread through Anatolia. The second, later wave carried cats of Egyptian ancestry around the Mediterranean and into Europe, Africa and western Asia from about the 1st millennium BC onwards. Cats travelled on ships, where they were useful for controlling rats and mice, and spread along trade routes, including Viking routes in the Baltic region.

The same study found that the blotched tabby coat pattern, now very common, became widespread only in the Middle Ages. For most of their history, domestic cats looked much like their striped wild ancestors.

Research in this field is moving fast. Studies released in 2025 have argued that many early cat remains from Neolithic Europe belonged to native European wildcats, and that domestic cats may have reached most of Europe only in the last few thousand years, possibly from North Africa. The exact timing and routes are still debated.

What changed in the cat

Cats changed less during domestication than most domestic animals. Domestic cats and wildcats can still interbreed, and hybrids are common where they meet.

A comparison of the domestic cat genome with wildcat genomes, published in 2014, found relatively few differences. Many involved genes linked to memory, fear and reward-seeking behaviour, which fits the idea that domestication mainly selected for tameness rather than for appearance. Most of the variety in coat colour, body shape and long hair found in modern breeds is the result of selective breeding in the last two centuries.

Myths and facts

Myth: The Egyptians were the first to domesticate cats. Egypt was important, but evidence from Cyprus and the Near East shows that cats lived closely with people thousands of years before the Egyptian state existed.

Myth: Cats were domesticated to be pets. The first relationship was probably practical: cats ate the rodents that threatened stored grain. Companionship likely grew alongside this role.

Myth: Domestic cats are fully separate from wildcats. The two can still interbreed, and scientists sometimes struggle to tell their bones apart.

Timeline

• c. 9000–8000 BC: Settled farming villages in the Fertile Crescent store grain, attracting house mice and wildcats.
• c. 7500 BC: A cat is buried near a human at Shillourokambos, Cyprus.
• c. 3700 BC: Cats are buried in the Predynastic cemetery at Hierakonpolis, Egypt.
• c. 3300 BC: Leopard cats live alongside farmers at Quanhucun, China.
• c. 1950 BC: Cats appear in Egyptian Middle Kingdom tomb paintings.
• 5th century BC: Herodotus describes Egyptian reverence for cats.
• 1st millennium BC – 1st millennium AD: Cats of Egyptian ancestry spread around the Mediterranean and into Europe.
• 2004: The Shillourokambos cat burial is published.
• 2007: Genetic study confirms the Near Eastern wildcat as the ancestor of domestic cats.

Legacy

The domestic cat is now one of the most common companion animals in the world, with a global population usually estimated in the hundreds of millions. Its history mirrors the spread of farming, trade and seafaring from the Near East, as cats followed human settlements and ships across the continents.

The story of the cat also challenges simple ideas of domestication. Unlike the domestication of sheep and goats, it was driven at first as much by the animal’s choices as by human control.

Why it matters

Cat domestication shows how the first farming villages created new ecological niches that wild animals could exploit. A partnership that began over stored grain in the Fertile Crescent has lasted roughly 10,000 years and reached almost every human society on Earth.