For the most part, cats have been sidelined in adult literature, making appearances as major players largely in books for children. Some literary cats are more realistic than others, but even the most fantastic usually have qualities that are instantly recognizable as feline. Often, the creators of fictional cats have used their own pets as … Read more
Whether you love cats or hate ‘em, we can all agree, no other cats have a rap quite like black cats. While black cats are tied to Halloween, black magic and misfortune, there’s significantly more to them than unpleasant stuff. Learn more about them, how they became Halloween symbols, the places where they bring luck, … Read more
Without a functioning immune system, our pets would easily fall prey to every hostile organism that came around. Immunity is designed to protect against such infectious invaders and eliminate any foreign matter or cells that somehow gain entrance into the body. Preventing the growth of cancer cells and tumors is also in its job description. … Read more
With the beginning of the great voyages of discovery and colonization that set out from Europe from the 15th century onward, domestic cats crossed the Atlantic for the first time. Taken on board sailing ships to control infestations of rodents, they had ample time on the long sea passages to the Americas to produce kittens. … Read more
Cats are world citizens and have come a long way from their roots in North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. While cats do not respect boundaries, and some early house cats probably moved independently, they have mostly traveled where humans have taken them. Even in areas where their wild counterparts have never occurred— such as … Read more
The story of the cat’s domestication is one of mutual appreciation, not servitude: early farming communities benefited from cats’ rodent-catching skills, while cats won themselves protection and shelter without losing their independence. Our relationship with cats reaches back thousands of years, although compared to the domestication of other animals, that of the cat was a … Read more
Since the time of the primitive cat-ancestor Cimolestes in the late Cretaceous, saber-toothed carnivores have arisen on three occasions in three different carnivore groups. The earliest were the creodonts, followed by the nimravids, and finally the saber-toothed cats, including Smilodon. None of these are considered to be directly ancestral to the cats living today. Saber-toothed … Read more
The heart and the blood vessels form the cardiovascular system. The cat’s heart is a four-chambered pump, about the size of a walnut, made of special non-tiring cardiac muscle. It beats between 140 and 220 times each minute, depending on the level of activity, and its resting heartbeat of 140–180 beats per minute is about … Read more
When I was six, I met my first real cat—a scruffy orange tabby named Oliver who lived under our neighbor’s porch. He was grumpy, fluffy, and had the confidence of a king. One summer evening, he walked right up, sat in my lap, and started purring like a tiny motorcycle. That moment changed everything for … Read more
One of the earliest ancestors of our modern cats is considered to be a meat-eating mammal named Proailurus (meaning “before cats”), which appeared in what is now Eurasia during the Oligocene epoch 34–23 million years ago. Little is known about Proailurus, but fossil remains show that it was not much larger than a domestic cat … Read more