Vikings also supposedly helped to spread these cats all over Europe (5) and maybe “took cats with them when they made early voyages to the Americas in the 10th century CE, 500 years before Columbus (18).” It is worth to mention that Viking and cat story-line appears a second time in a connection to this study. ♦ Vikings carried cats of Egyptian origin in their ships for pest control (9, 11, 13). Anthrozoologist and animal behaviorist John Bradshaw, adds that Egyptian cats were “more fun to be with but just as good at hunting mice” (18). ♦ Egyptian cats were more social and tame, this is why they were more popular than Anatolian cats (4, 6, 14, 15, 16). “Today’s cats are likely a blend of both Turkish and Egyptian cats (4).” It is said that both Anatolian and Egyptian wildcats supposedly contributed to the gene pool of the domestic cat. A video from Nature ignored the name of Anatolia Region completely, only mentioning the “Fertile Crescent” (22). Many sources do not name Anatolia, only the Middle/Near East, southwest Asia or Fertile Crescent (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 16). ♦ Cats were domesticated twice (“two waves”): 10,000 years ago by first farmers, and later by ancient Egyptians. As we will see soon, the mainstream media picked up on Egyptian and Viking narrative enthusiastically. We have reviewed numerous media reports, some of which we used as examples (3-21). It has been making headlines in many media outlets. The study is valuable but is far from being groundbreaking. So where is exactly the domestic cat’s homeland? Is it somewhere in the Near East or in Egypt? Did humans domesticate cats more than once? A widely publicized study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution journal attempted to answer these questions. However, the hypothesis that cats were domesticated in ancient Egypt from local wildcats and from there spread to other parts of the world, has always been more popular among the general public and scientists alike. Two important discoveries gave us some clueswhere cats possibly came from 9,500-year-old cat and human burial from Cyprus suggested that wildcats were first tamed in Anatolia (1), and a study conducted in 2007 confirmed that all cats originated from a few Felis silvestris lybica wildcat lineages somewhere in the Near East (2). Despite our close relationship with these animals, we still have very little knowledge of their origins. Cats are one of the most popular pets in many Western countries.
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