Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo have authored 20 books, including How the Cadillac Got Its Fins, The Couch Potato Guide to Life and the bestselling Just Curious Jeeves. They have written articles for many major periodicals including The New York Times, Salon, Reader's Digest, and The Washington Post and have generated more than 30,000 questions for trivia games and game shows such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Their website, which lists their "This Day in History" nationallysyndicated column.

CHAPTER 1

Cats Through History

"Cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by thefact that in Ancient Egypt they were worshiped as gods. This makes them prone toset themselves up as critics and censors of the frail and erring human beingswhose lot they share."

—P. G. Wodehouse

Scientists believe that the entire cat family developed over time from a small,weasely animal called Miacis, which lived more than 50 million years ago. Theybelieve that Miacis was the forebear of dogs, bears, and raccoons, too.

The first members of the cat family appeared about 40 million years ago.

Scientists believe that the ancient cat's original coat color was grayish-brownwith darker tabby stripes. Such a color combination would provide excellentcamouflage in most natural surroundings (as well as on bookshelves and inclosets).

Where did the modern cat come from? Scientists believe that the modern pet catactually derives from two different sources. Shorthaired breeds descended from aspecies of African wildcat called the Caffree cat (Felis libyca), which wastamed by the ancient Egyptians sometime around 2500 B.C.E. Crusaders broughtCaffrees back to Europe, where they bred with small European wildcats to createthe modern shorthaired housecat.

Longhaired cats, on the other hand, seem to have descended from the Asianwildcat (Felis manul). The Asian longhaired cat was domesticated in India aboutthe same time that Egypt began domesticating the shorthair.

Unlike most domesticated animals, the size of cats has remained virtuallyunchanged during their association with people.

The man who created the method of zoological classification still used today wasCarl Linnaeus, who lived in the eighteenth century. In 1758 he dubbed thedomestic cat Felis catus. Despite their differences, all current breeds of housecat are considered the same species.

There are plenty of dogs depicted on prehistoric cave paintings, but not onecat.

Actually, there's a reason why there are no cats on ancient cave paintings. It'sthe same reason why archeological digs of ancient remains find bones of goats,dogs, cows, and dogs, but no ancient cat bones or toys: People and cats begantheir association together only about 6,000 years ago.

Cat o'Nile Tails

Cats do appear regularly on tomb paintings and frescos from ancient Egypt(4,000–5,000 years ago). They were an important part of Egyptian society. Infact, they were worshiped as gods in ancient Egypt.

There were practical reasons for worshiping cats. The Egyptians were verydependent on grains for their main staples of bread and beer, and they knew howmuch the cats contributed to their lives and economy by keeping rats and mice incheck.

In ancient Egypt, the penalty for killing a cat was death.

Egyptians followed this procedure in the case of a house fire: Save the housecat first.

Ancient Egyptians first tried to domesticate the hyena to take care of their ratproblem. When that didn't work out, they tried the cat, with a little moresuccess.

Egyptian cats also acted as a sort of hunting dog—their owners stunned birdswith boomerangs, and then cats were unleashed to finish off the birds and bringthem back.

If a household cat died in ancient Egypt, its owners would shave their eyebrowsin mourning and lovingly transport the cat carcass to one of the cities devotedto mummifying cats for their journey to the next world.

The cats apparently didn't make it all the way across the River Styx. In 1888,about 300,000 cat mummies were discovered still lounging around this world in aburial ground at the ancient city of Beni Hassan. We guess it illustrates onceagain how hard it is to get cats to go where you want them to go.

What happened to the 300,000 cat mummies? They were dug up with tractors andsold for $18.43 a ton to an English fertilizer company.

Egyptians thought that a cat in the house would ensure that the household wouldhave many children, because the goddess Bast, with the body of a woman and thehead of a cat, was also the goddess of love and fertility.

It was against the law to smuggle cats out of Egypt. (Not that the law did muchgood—Phoenician sailors smuggled them out of the country and traded them aroundthe Mediterranean.)

Unfortunately, this worship of the cat had its downside, too. In 525 B.C.E., thePersians went to war with the Egyptians. Mindful of the Egyptians' religiousreverence for cats, the Persians lined up a row of cats in front of theirwarriors. Egyptian soldiers were put into a crisis of faith—they quicklydiscovered that they couldn't swing a sword or fire an arrow for fear of hurtinga cat and hissing off the cat goddess. In a cataclysm and a catastrophe, thewily Persians quickly defeated the Egyptians.

The people of ancient India used cats to protect their grains from rodents. TheChinese and Japanese also used them against rats, but in this case, to protecttheir silkworms from the pests.

Haughty Coature

For the Romans, the cat was the embodiment of freedom. Statues of the Romangoddess of liberty showed her with a cup, a broken scepter, and a cat, the mostindependent domestic animal, lying at her feet.

The Japanese once believed that owning a cat as a pet was inhumane. In the year1602 the Japanese government declared all cats free and forced civilians to freeall adult pet cats. The new laws forbade the buying, selling, or trading ofcats.

In the Dutch struggle for independence from the Spanish in the sixteenthcentury, the Dutch used the image of a cat to symbolize freedom. During theFrench Revolution, cats were also used as emblems of freedom.

The Truth about Cats and Gods

Besides ancient Egypt, there were catworshiping religions among the Incas inSouth America. In fact, there still are cat worshipers in Thailand, China,Burma, and India.

The cat is the only domesticated animal not ever mentioned in the Bible.

Cats, however, are commended in the Jewish Talmud. A part written in about 500C.E. waxes eloquently about cats' admirable qualities, encouraging people to owncats "to help keep their houses clean."

Confucius was a cat lover. So was Mohammed, who considered dogs unclean butheartily approved of cats. Legend has it that he once cut the sleeve off hisgarment to avoid disturbing a cat that had gone to sleep on it.

During the witch hunts of Europe, hundreds of thousands of cats were killed forbeing in league with the devil. As a result, the devil got his due: Ratssuddenly had free reign and plagues ravished the continent. The Black Death inparticular, transmitted to people by rat fleas, killed about one-fourth ofEurope's population during the mid-1300s.

Perhaps the town elders of Salem, Massachusetts, learned something from theexperience. When they conducted their own witch hunt in 1692, no cats were putto death. However, two dogs were. Not to mention twenty innocent people.

* * *

Cats have had an on-again/off-again relationship with medicine and science. Forpart of the Middle Ages, many Western Europeans believed cats had magicalhealing powers. Doctors prescribed a cat to patients believed to be going insanebecause it was thought a cat could cure insanity. Today, many cat lovers suspectthat the reverse might be true.

The Renaissance was considered a golden age for cats. Nearly every home hadthem, from the castles to the hovels on the edges of town.

Who imported the first housecats to the New World? The Pilgrims did. Theybrought rat-catching boat cats with them on their Atlantic voyage.

Colonists during the 1600s and 1700s brought their cats with them from Europe.Most of the cats in the United States and Canada are descendents of these cats.

Early colonists also brought over catnip, but not for the cats—for themselves,because they thought it was medicinal.

History tells us that the first American to own a Siamese cat was Lucy Hayes,wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes, in the 1870s. It was a present from DavidSickels, the ambassador to Siam (now Thailand). Lucy named the cat "Siam."

However, a mere Siamese cat wasn't the most exotic feline in the White House.Teddy Roosevelt kept a lion; Martin Van Buren, a pair of tiger cubs; and CalvinCoolidge, a bobcat named Smokey.

Unleash the Cats of War!

Unfortunately, the first casualties of war are often cats. Besides the Persiansusing them as shields in their war with the Egyptians and the attempts to usethem during World War II, cats have been used as unwilling combatants for almostas long as people have been fighting.

Who Put the Cat in the Catapult? During the Middle Ages, besieging armies wouldcatapult a variety of loathsome things into castles. The decaying bodies oflong-dead cats were a favorite.

Man's Inhumanity to Cats: A fifteenthcentury Italian military engineerrecommended using cats with flaming materials on them as a military weapon. Hefigured that the flame would scare the cats into running for cover in and underbuildings, and the flames would do the rest.

"Garçon, a soupçon of feline mignon!" During the siege of Paris in the Franco-RussianWar of 1870, the food shortage was so desperate that no zoo animal orpet escaped the stew pot. A gourmet Parisian restaurant switched its cuisine toincorporate dogs, rats, birds, and cats, including the menu item chat fricassèe.

During World War I, caged cats were brought to the trenches on the front lines.Not to kill the rodents, of which there were plenty, but as "canaries in themines": their sudden deaths were meant to warn the soldiers of the presence ofchemical warfare.

During the Nazis' 900-day siege of Leningrad (1941–1944), people ate their catsand anything else they could find. For decades afterward, the city celebrated anannual day of mourning in memory of the pets that involuntarily gave their livesto help keep their owners alive.

In the early '60s the CIA experimented with training dogs and cats as deliverysystems for microphones and bombs.

Finally, there was the cat torture device, used during eighteenth-centuryAmerica. Punishment involved a fearful, angry cat dangling by its tail, pulledback and forth across the victim's back.

CHAPTER 2

Notables & Top Cats

"The cat always leaves a mark on his friend."

—Aesop

The last Royal British Navy feline mascot and mouse catcher was able sea catFred Wunpound Cat, so named because he was "found at the pound, and bought for apound." He served from 1966 to 1974, traveling more than 250,000 miles in hiscareer on the HMS Hecate. Fred retired to a school in Somerset when the RoyalNavy passed anti-cat regulations.

An English cat named Henry was swept over the side of a neighbor's dock by awave. After a quick search of the murky waters below, he was given up for dead.Seventeen days later, someone spotted eyes peering out of a crack in thesupports. Henry had managed to hang on when the wave washed him over and found acrevice to hole up in, while waiting to be rescued.

The Brave Pet of the Year in 2000 went to a cat named Coffee from Cheshire,United Kingdom. When something on the stove caught fire in his sleeping owner'shome, he didn't just stand around, helplessly mewing, he took matters into hisown paws, head-butting his owner and biting him on the nose until he woke up,saving the lives of everyone in the house.

Here's to ol' Tipper, a cat from Tampa, Florida! While his collar was lodged onsomething and choking him, this lucky cat accidentally knocked the telephone offthe table and hit the speed-dial option for 9-1-1. Tipper lived.

The cat that appeared in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburnwas named Orangey. Orangey was also featured in the movie Rhubarb and thetelevision show Our Miss Brooks. In both 1952 and 1962, Orangey won the PatsyAward (the name stands for "Picture Animal Top Star of the Year"—it's the animalequivalent of the Oscars).

The Dickin Medal for Valor is a British military award for animals that wascreated by Maria Dickin, who founded the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, aveterinary charity that now operates forty-five animal hospitals across Britain.The medal has been presented to eighteen dogs, three horses, thirty-one pigeons... and only one cat.

The feline recipient was Simon, a cat that served as rat-catcher first class onthe British escort sloop HMS Amethyst. In April 1949, the British were trying topreserve their colonial interests in China when the Amethyst was trapped andshelled by the Chinese Navy on the Yangtze River. Seventeen people were killedand twenty five were wounded. More important for our story, brave little Simonwas wounded and trapped in the wreckage for four days. The Chinese besieged theship for most of the summer. During this time, and despite his wounds, Simoncontinued his duties, hunting rats on the trapped ship, which helped to preservethe ship's dwindling food supply.

Of course, you could argue that Simon's actions were not particularly brave oraltruistic—that he merely did what any hungry cat surrounded by water would do.Still, the story of the ship and the cat became a 1956 movie called The YangtzeIncident.

A group of Matterhorn climbers in the Swiss Alps were surprised in 1950 to finda four-month-old kitten following along behind them. The feline, owned byJosephine Aufdenblatten, managed to successfully reach the summit, the height ofwhich is 14,691.

For more than a century, the British government has used an army of up to100,000 civil servant cats to keep government office buildings free fromrodents.

The most famous government cat was Humphrey, who served as official mouser at 10Downing Street through the terms of three prime ministers (Margaret Thatcher,John Majors, and Tony Blair) until his retirement at age eleven in 1997.

The fattest cat ever recorded was Himmy, a tabby from Queensland, Australia. Heweighed almost forty-seven pounds at his heaviest and often had to bewheelbarrowed around when traveling. The second largest cat on record is Katofrom Norway. Kato weighs thirty-six pounds and his neck is fourteen inchesaround.

Bad Cats!

Poor Percy! He was a homing pigeon that won the France-to-Sheffield race in1993. Or would have, anyway. The moment Percy landed, a cat attacked and atehim. Percy's owner attempted to retrieve Percy's tag to show the judges, but bythe time she could wrench it away from the cat, two other pigeons had flown inahead. The deceased Percy never got his day, and his owner took home a thirdplace ribbon.

A woman from Chester, England, called the police one night upon hearing anintruder in her garage. Police cars converged on the scene, and the officersdecided to call in the department's helicopter to minimize the burglar's chancesfor escape. Imagine everyone's embarrassment when police rushed the garage onlyto find that the intruder was Tumble, a neighbor's eighteen-year-old cat.

CHAPTER 3

Catty Words

"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."

—Steven Wright

Originally, it wasn't "curiosity" that was said to kill a cat, it was worry. InShakespeare's day, the saying went "Care kills a cat;" care being another wordfor worry. In O. Henry's 1909 work Schools and Schools, he wrote, "Curiosity cando more things than kill a cat," playing somewhat off of the earlier saying. Thephrase was shortened to its current form by the time it appeared in EugeneO'Neill's Diff'rent in 1922: "Curiosity killed the cat."

Probably an imitation of the sound cats make, the ancient Egyptian word for catwas mau.

Ancient Syrians called it qato. In Latin, "cat" is cattus. In French: chat; inGerman: katze. The Danes say kat, while the Spanish and Italians go with gatto.The Russians say kot.

In old English, the common male name "Gilbert" came to be used mainly for malecats that were neutered. Over time, the name was shortened to "Gib." Neuteredcats today are still sometimes referred to as gibs.

"Grimalkin" is a name used for old female cats. Originally it was "gray malkin";gray representing "old," and malkin being an altered form of the names Malde andMaud, both derivative of Matilda. The dictionary tells us that grimalkin is alsoused for old hares and slovenly women, as well.

Prior to 1760, male cats were traditionally called "rams" or "boars," but inthat year, an anonymous book titled The Life and Adventures of a Cat waspublished. Its main character was named Tom the Cat. Because it was widely read,the name stuck and was shortened in later years to Tom Cat or tomcat.

Several hundred years ago, an audience would hiss and boo at performers whenthey felt they hadn't gotten their money's worth. Since this hissing raucous soresembled cats caterwauling on the fence late at night, these audience theatricsbecame known as catcalls.

The cat's instinctual habit of quickly darting up a tree or under something forprotection probably spawned the common insult, "scaredy cat."

If you're caught in a difficult situation or are suffering acute anxiety, youmight be called "a cat on a hot tin roof." Although this phrase has been burnedin our collective memory, thanks to the Tennessee Williams' play by the samename, it dates in America to around 1900. It came from the British "a cat on hotbricks," which had the same meaning and was first seen in writing in 1880.