Chapter SIX

A Tale of Two Kitties

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” (My apologies to Master’s Cat and Willamina. You’ll see why later.)

It would take volumes to thoroughly cover the breadth and depth of our place in history, so this chapter will give you just a few of the highlights.

Although our big cat ancestors have been around forever, domestic cats (that’s us) have only been around for about four to six thousand years although some cat schools of thought say we have been teaching humans for almost eight thousand years. Maybe it just feels that way. We small cats are descendents of the African Wild Cat. Living in the villages with humans, we ate their food and shared their homes. We were considered an “independent” breed. Yup, it is definitely hereditary.

Perhaps the greatest era in our history was our education of the early Egyptians. They were wise for people; they treated us like gods. We lived in temples eating, mousing and sleeping. We were painted, sculpted and the female humans colored their faces to look like us. (My mom would do well to pay attention to that.) Most importantly, during the Egyptian era it was a crime to kill us, and anyone who did met his own death from a stone-hurling crowd. Just hurting one of our little paws was enough to warrant a human the experience of digital detachment. Bastet, the goddess of love and fertility, was represented as having the head of a cat and the body of a woman. Good choice.

Greek tradition tells how Hacate, a Greek goddess, became a cat to save herself from Typhon, a monster who wanted to have power over heaven and earth. She resumed her original form after Zeus had slain Typhon and we became her favorite animal and she, like us, became symbolically tied with the moon.

A Tale of Two Kitties