The Domestic Cat Has Been

The domestic cat has been a remarkably successful migrant; in a relatively short space of time, it has spread from the Near East Africa to all the continents except Antarctica, and on tThe domestic cat has been ao many islands.

Early in their dispersal, cats may have been transported simply to satisfy people's curiosity, but the cause of their continued success was the spread of the mouse and rat.

Cats became a valuable commodity in the war against rodents, and it was in this "terminating" role that they traveled across the world's trade routes, eventually reaching the New World. In total, the domestic cat population currently numbers hundreds of millions worldwide.

Language studies offer interesting clues about where cats originated and when they traveled. In his classic work, A History of Domesticated Animals (1963), naturalist Frederick Zeuner claimed that the cat came from the Near East and Africa, and discussed the origins of its various names.

He theorized that the word "cat" was of North African descent and came from the Berber word kadiska, which corresponds with biological evidence that points to this region as the origin of the domestic cat. In other parts of North Africa and the Middle East, the domestic cat was known as kadis in Nubian, qato in Syrian, and quttah in Arabic.