Cat Conundrum

Cats are just domesticated enough to get into trouble in the wild and just wild enough to get into trouble in the home, a cat conundrum paraphrased from a friend. Currently residing with a pair of ferals has really brought this home to me, literally. Dogs were domesticated by hunter-gatherers thousands of years before cats and humans began their complex alliance. Cats were most likely domesticated by farmers long ago who needed to keep their grain free of vermin. Genetic studies reveal that all domestic cats trace their roots to the Near Eastern wild cat, making the Near East one site of domestication as well as a cradle of agriculture and Egyptian paintings from roughly 4,000 years ago clearly show people caring for cats. Researchers have now found eight cat bones in the garbage pits of Quanhucan, a farming village in central China, and two of the bones are more than 5,000 years old. Apparently cats were on the job even earlier than once thought. The two that have taken up residence with me are on the job at daybreak daily leaping up onto my bed to attack the mice under the blankets that in actuality are my feet.