“You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in/His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed; His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed. He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake; And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.”

Thus goes T.S. Eliot’s famous poem on his beloved feline: the domestic cat.

But when, and from where, did these creatures come to colonise the world and enter Eliot’s poetic imagination in London? A new Science paper dug deep into the historical movements of the mystery cat and found that the domestic cat ( Felis catus ) originated from the African wildcat ( Felis lybica lybica ) and quickly spread, most likely by ship, across the globe just 2,000 years ago.

Researche

See Full Page