Ever since the Stone Age the cat has adopted man for companionship. In an excavated grave in Shillourokambos, Cyprus were found skeletons of a cat next to a child’s, dated 9500 years ago. That Cyprus has remained separated from the mainland since its formation suggests humans brought cats along with them to the island. Unlike most other domesticated animals, including dogs, sheep, and horses, there is little genetic difference between the modern house cat and its wild brethren. Cats domesticated themselves to live alongside humans. They have evolved to make us care for them.
By 2000 BC, the cat had become ubiquitous in ancient Egypt. Depictions of noble women with a cat under their chair indicate they had entered the house to become a house cat at this point. They were then worshipped as deities to represent justice, fertility, and power, and are revered into the present day. In Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, the British orientalist Edward William Lane recounted a cat garden commissioned by the Sultán Ez-Záhir Beybars to house stray cats in Cairo: “It is a curious fact, that, in Cairo, houseless cats are fed at the expense of the Kádee; or, rather, almost wholly at his expense. Every afternoon, a quantity of offal is brought into the great court before the Mahkem′eh; and the cats are called together to eat. The Sultán Ez-Záhir Beybars (as I learn from the Básh Kátib of the Kádee) bequeathed a garden, which is called “gheyt el-kuttah” (or the garden of the cat), near his mosque, on the north of Cairo, for the benefit of the cats.”
In the 6th century, the first cats arrived in Japan with the earliest Buddhist scriptures via the Silk Road and quickly became a favorite pet. In the 9th century, the Emperor Uda described his cat in his court diaries, the Uda Tenno Gyoki, a part of the collection of The Diaries of the Three Reigns. It was a most exceptional black cat with an admiring physical prowess and spirituality. Uda had a keen interest in Yin-Yang divination and believed that the cat embodied the spirit of Yin and Yang. In the 2nd entry, For the Love of a Cat, he wrote:
“My cat is a foot and a half in length and about six inches in height. When he curls up he is very small, looking like a black millet berry, but when he stretches out he is long, resembling a drawn bow. The pupils of his eyes sparkle, dazzlingly bright like shiny needles flashing with light, while the points of his ears stick straight up, unwaveringly, looking like the bowl of a spoon. When he crouches he becomes a ball without feet, resembling a round jade taken from the depths of a cave. My cat moves silently, making not a single sound, like a black dragon above the clouds.
By nature he has a preference for Taoist-style health practices and instinctively follows the “five-bird regimen.” He always keeps his head and tail low against the ground. But when he arches his back, he extends some two feet in height. His fur is lustrous, perhaps on account of his Taoist health practices. He is good at catching mice at night, better at it than other cats.
The former emperor enjoyed the cat for several days and then gave him to me. I have cared for him now for five years. Every morning I give him milk gruel. It is not simply that I am impressed by the cat’s many talents; I have felt particularly keen to lavish the utmost care upon him, however insignificant such a creature may really be, because he was given to me by the former emperor. I once said to the cat, ‘You possess the forces of Yin and Yang and have a body that is the way it should be. I suspect that in your heart you may even know all about me!’ The cat heaved a sigh, raised his head, and stared fixedly at my face, seeming so choked with emotion, his heart so full of feeling, that he could not say a thing in reply.”
By the 14th century, the cat had appeared in several classic texts, including The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, The Tale of Genji, and the Tsurezuregusa of Kenko. During the Edo period, the maneki neko, the “welcoming cat”, was born. With a bell around its neck and one paw raised near its ear, it has become an image of Japan as ubiquitous as the cherry blossom. In Utagawa Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo collection, the Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival depicts a white cat staring out the window from the second story of a brothel in the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters. By the 20th century, Doraemon, the blue cat-robot, and Hello Kitty took the world by storm. Today there are cat cafes in Tokyo where patrons pay to play with cats roaming freely around the establishment.
It is said that dogs see their owners as gods, but cats see themselves as gods. Unlike other domesticated animals whom we have evolved to be of use to us, cats are loved just for being who they are, like who they were 10,000 years ago. Not only do we love cats for their independence and their uncanny ability to always land on their feet, we even desire to walk like them, cue the cat walk, and to look like them, cue the cat eye. You may think it silly, until you witness a cat strutting its tail high while balancing all fours with grace on a thin line; and then you would, too, wish to be the cat.
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