Domestic Cat

Felis catus

Domestic Cat (Felis catus) is a species in the genus Felis, family Felidae, order Carnivora.

Scientific classification

Description

The domestic cat is a small obligate carnivore, typically 4–5 kilograms, retaining most of the anatomy of its wild ancestor: retractile claws, a short facial skeleton with a reduced dentition built entirely for shearing, and a reflective tapetum lucidum that roughly doubles the light available to the retina in dim conditions.

Unlike the dog, the cat has undergone little morphological change under domestication. A stray domestic cat and a African wildcat are difficult to tell apart on skeletal evidence alone.

Domestication

Cats descend from the African wildcat, Felis lybica, and appear to have entered human settlements in the Near East around 10,000 years ago, drawn by the rodents that came with stored grain — a commensal route rather than a deliberate one. The oldest direct evidence of a cat–human association is a joint burial in Cyprus dated to about 9,500 years ago; Cyprus has no native cats, so the animal must have been carried there by boat.

Ecology

As an introduced predator the domestic cat has been implicated in the extinction of numerous island birds, mammals and reptiles, and free-ranging cats kill very large numbers of small vertebrates annually in continental settings as well. This is one of the few points where a companion animal is also a significant conservation problem, and it is contentious.

Behaviour

Cats are obligate carnivores and cannot synthesise taurine, arachidonic acid or retinol in adequate amounts, so all three must come from animal tissue. They sleep for a large fraction of the day, hunt mainly at dawn and dusk, and — unusually among felids — tolerate high densities and form loose colonies where food is concentrated.

References

• Driscoll, C. A. et al. (2007). The Near Eastern origin of cat domestication. Science 317.
• Turner, D. C. and Bateson, P., eds. (2014). The Domestic Cat: The Biology of its Behaviour.