The first and chief point of interest in this chapter is, whether the numerous domesticated varieties of the dog have descended from a single wild species, or from several. Some authors believe that all have descended from the wolf, or from the jackal, or from an unknown and extinct species. Others again believe, and this of late has been the favourite tenet, that they have descended from several species, extinct and recent, more or less commingled together. We shall probably never be able to ascertain their origin with certainty. Palæontology does not throw much light on the question, owing, on the one hand, to the close similarity of the skulls of extinct as well as living wolves and jackals, and owing on the other hand to the great dissimilarity of the skulls of the several breeds of the domestic dogs. It seems, however, that remains have been found in the later tertiary deposits more like those of a large dog than of a wolf, which favours the belief of De Blainville that our dogs are the descendants of a single extinct species. On the other hand, some authors go so far as to assert that every chief domestic breed must have had its wild prototype.

Origins of the cat

Although the ancestors of the domestic cat (Felis silvestris catus) first appeared about 35 million years ago (MYA) during the late Eocene, the cat family or Felidae, to which all living cat species belong, emerged somewhat later during the Miocene about 10–11 MYA (Johnson & O’Brien, 1997; O’Brien et al., 2008). Morphological and molecular studies of phylogenetic relationships among living felids indicate that the 37 extant species can be divided up into 8 major phylogenetic groups or lineages: the Panthera lineage; the bay cat lineage; the leopard cat lineage; the caracal lineage; the ocelot, lynx and puma lineages; and, finally, the domestic cat or Felis lineage (Leyhausen, 1979; Collier & O’Brien, 1985; Salles, 1992; Johnson & O’Brien, 1997; O’Brien et al., 2008). The latter is believed to have diverged from the others around 6.2 MYA, and comprises four species of small cats that seem to have originated around the Mediterranean basin: the jungle cat (Felis chaus), the black-footed cat (F. nigripes), the sand cat (F. margarita) and the wildcat (F. silvestris) (O’Brien et al., 2008).

Introduction

Many previous accounts of communication between domestic cats have been largely based on a traditional ethological approach. The signals and the context in which they occur have been described and related to the kind of environment signaller and receiver can expect to find themselves in, and to the sensory capabilities of the receiver. For example, this approach explains the use of scent signals by domestic cats as products of both their acute sense of smell, which probably evolved primarily in relation to detection of food, and also their origin as territorial animals which needed to communicate with neighbours that they might rarely encounter face to face. However, the domestic cat is the product of two distinctly different phases of evolution, the first as a wild, largely solitary, predator, and the second as a commensal and then semi-domesticated social species, living in an increasingly dependent relationship with humans. There are few studies of the communicative repertoire of the ancestral species, Felis silvestris libyca, and it is now clear from the distribution of libyca DNA that many wild cats, including those from Africa and the Middle East, are, in varying proportions, hybrids between wild F. silvestris subspecies and domesticated F. s. catus (Driscoll et al., 2007). Commensalism will have brought with it new selection pressures on communication, largely intraspecific and resulting from the higher density at which these cats live, by comparison with that of their solitary ancestors.

Of all domestic animals, cats are the most capable of breeding, giving birth to offspring and raising their young without human care or intervention. In the classic example, a mother cat that has secretly gone through parturition in some obscure location reveals a litter of perfectly healthy kittens to the human family members after the kittens have been born. This romanticised view of feline motherhood has given way to the more formalised cattery operation, or the family breeder where a mother cat may give birth to her litter of kittens in the midst of an overly concerned family audience.

In this chapter, following some general information about parturition and the care of newborn, normal maternal behaviour is discussed along with comments about problems with various aspects of maternal behaviour. Problems with maternal behaviour manifest themselves primarily as either lack of proper attention to the kittens, resulting in inadequate care and nutrition, or cannibalism of the kittens. Of course, a necessary aspect of reproduction is the mating, which in this chapter is dealt with mostly in the context of intentional mating of females with selected males, in a home or cat-breeding facility.

Introduction

With so many people owning cats, understanding cat behaviour in the human home is important. Cats are the largest pet population in the USA. In 2011, of 374 million pets in the USA, 86.4 million were cats. In the same year, 78.2 million were dogs (ASPCA, 2012). In 2010 in the USA more than 22 billion dollars were spent on cat food (American Pet Products Association, 2011). Most of the research on domestic cat behaviour has been obtained from studies of cats in shelters, in laboratory situations or in free-roaming (feral) situations. Veterinarians and animal behaviourists have relied on information gained from studies of these populations for information about the normal behaviour of domestic cats. Most of the interactions people have with their cats is in the home. Domestic cats rarely accompany their owners outside of their homes. According to the recent American Pet Products Manufacturers Association’s Pet Owners Survey, 3% of cat owners in the USA take their pets with them when they travel for at least two nights compared with 19% of dog owners (American Pet Products Association, 2011). In a recent repeated-measures study, cats were present with their owners 6% and dogs were present with their owners 19% of the time the owners were outside of the home (Friedmann et al., 2010). However, very little is known about cats’ behaviour in the home.

Infamous for an ambivalence that riles some and charms others, the domestic cat’s relationship with humans is now the subject of extensive zooarchaeological study. The point at which domestication took place is the subject of a debate that is complicated by the interbreeding of domestic and wild cats. The complexity of the cat’s domestication goes some way toward explaining the sparse literary and linguistic evidence for this animal in early medieval England, where they seem to have existed largely without human interference. Despite this lack, Aldhelm’s fascinating Anglo-Latin riddle, Enigma 65, Muriceps, explores the role of the mouser in vivid detail. This chapter provides a close reading of Aldhelm’s riddle, after discussing the cat’s pathway to domestication and surveying comparative evidence from early medieval sources. It argues that the semi-domesticated nature of early medieval cats shines through in Aldhelm’s poem, which employs both positive imagery of the mouser’s domestic role (faithfulness, vigilance and guardianship), and negative imagery drawn from the biblical tradition (secretiveness, snare-laying and tribal enmity). Aldhelm’s cat is both a welcome cohabiter and diabolical presence in the human household, an ambiguity that is juxtaposed with the more thoroughly domesticated dog with whom the riddle-cat refuses to cooperate.

Introduction

This chapter reflects an amazing ‘success story’, the story of a predator species, the domestic cat, which has more or less conquered the world within a few thousand years – partly with the help of humans, but mostly because of its amazing flexibility. It is not a new story and therefore easy to summarise. The summary is based upon three chapters in the second edition of this book, namely Macdonald et al. (2000), Liberg et al. (2000), and Fitzgerald and Turner (2000), but of course updated with later findings. Nor is that success story without ecological consequences which continue to fire the debate between cat friends and cat foes – or at least cat lovers and conservationists. Both sides of this debate should view the evidence before making hasty judgements.

Solitary life versus group-living: a question of resource availability

The domestic cat as a species and quite possibly as an individual shows amazing flexibility in its sociality toward conspecifics. Its ancestor, the North African wildcat, F. s. libyca, was (and is) indeed a solitary, territorial species, which presumably made use of the rodent populations concentrated in and around grain storage facilities of early farming settlements (see Chapter 7). As the likely story goes, this was beneficial to the farmers and they began provisioning the ‘wild’ cats with extra food, their home ranges became concentrated – and overlapping – around these human settlements and storage facilities, representing the first step toward domestication. The Resource Dispersion Hypothesis proposes that the dispersion of resources may be such that the smallest territory providing adequate security for the primary social unit (mother and offspring) may also support additional group members (Macdonald et al., 2000).