From todays Daily Mash:

LARRY the Cat is the only inhabitant of Downing Street to have done a good job this century, it has been confirmed.
Larry, who does everything he is asked by catching an average of two mice a week, has yet to plunge the country into disarray, start a disastrous war or drive the economy into a tree.
Larry said: “I just show up and do my job. No fuss, no bother.
“I think one advantage I have is that I lick my own bum rather than having other people do it for me. It keeps me grounded.”
He added: “I’ve no plans to run for the top job myself. People say that politics attracts unprincipled psychopaths and as a cat I just wouldn’t fit in. I’m too nice."

Africats to the Purr-ymids: DNA study reveals long tale of cat domestication.

Study of ancient genetic material from Egypt to Viking graveyards reveals all tamed cats descended from one rodent-catching African subspecies first tamed by Near East farmers 9,000 years ago.

The Guardian - DNA study reveals long tale of cat domestication

Did humans tame cats or did cats tame themselves in exchange for an easy food source? Knowing cats I rather think it was the latter.

Neither, cats tamed us and then only deigned to stick around as long as it was worth their while. I've just offered mine some food which it declined and then had me open. first the back and then the front, door and wandered off. In the meantime the new wee tabby in the neighbourhood strolled in through the back door and finished up the food my cat had left.

So who's domesticated?

Poor Larry looks dreadfully hot: he has commented how having a fur coat is a real trial at the moment. I hope someone from Number 10 has the sense to take him indoors to a cool spot, and keep him there until the weather breaks.

The Romans were apparently very fond of their moggies:

The Romans respected the vermin-catching abilities of the domestic cat, but also saw them as exotic pets and sacred animals. They associated the cat with liberty and divinity and so the cat was the only animal allowed to walk freely around their temples. Libertas (the goddess of liberty) was often depicted with a cat at her feet.

So people who think they are too good to post on the Moggy Thread should put that in their pipes and smoke it.

That's interesting. Steven Saylor, author of the 'Gordianus' historical who-dunnits set around the time of Sulla to the rise of Julius Cesar, and generally I think well-researched and historically accurate, rather suggests that the Romans preferred dogs to cats. He implies - and it is a very minor, somewhat incidental plot device - that most Romans (and in this period that still means only citizens of the Eternal City itself rather than any wider Italian or Imperial connotation), viewed cats, or at least pet cats, as feminine, foreign (Egyptian in particular) and slightly sinister. Proper manly, masterful, militaristic Romans kept dogs, if they kept any pets at all other than working animals. Saylor's principal character Gordianus, although a citizen, is far from being a typical Roman: he has a house-cat called Bast (named after the Egyptian cat-headed goddess of hearth and home), who he acquired at the same time as his Egyptian slave, concubine, mother to his children, and eventually wife, ... although even he admits that the cat, just like his Egyptian mistress/slave, deigns to live with him only for as long as it suits them.

Did Cleo bring with her an increased appreciation for cats when she arrived in Rome to visit Jules? All things Egyptian certainly became very much in vogue after that grand visit ... even that rather coarse soldier, Mark Anthony, was won over.

Ah, but Bast was original a warrior god and was only reduced to friendly, protective house-puss status when Sekhmet arrived from Upper Egypt with the conquest of Lower. She was also cat or lion headed and didn't look amenable to a gentle tickle behind the ears and so the Romans may have appreciated that side of their feline companions.







Sekhmet, the Lion-Headed Goddess of War

Margaret Atwood

He was the sort of man
who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Many flies are now alive
while he is not.
He was not my patron.
He preferred full granaries, I battle.
My roar meant slaughter.
Yet here we are together
in the same museum.
That’s not what I see, though, the fitful
crowds of staring children
learning the lesson of multi-
cultural obliteration, sic transit
and so on.

I see the temple where I was born
or built, where I held power.
I see the desert beyond,
where the hot conical tombs, that look
from a distance, frankly, like dunces’ hats,
hide my jokes: the dried-out flesh
and bones, the wooden boats
in which the dead sail endlessly
in no direction.

What did you expect from gods
with animal heads?
Though come to think of it
the ones made later, who were fully human
were not such good news either.
Favour me and give me riches,
destroy my enemies.
That seems to be the gist.
Oh yes: And save me from death.
In return we’re given blood
and bread, flowers and prayer,
and lip service.

Maybe there’s something in all of this
I missed. But if it’s selfless
love you’re looking for,
you’ve got the wrong goddess.

I just sit where I’m put, composed
of stone and wishful thinking:
that the deity who kills for pleasure
will also heal,
that in the midst of your nightmare,
the final one, a kind lion
will come with bandages in her mouth
and the soft body of a woman,
and lick you clean of fever,
and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck
and caress you into darkness and paradise.




Did Marcus Didius Falco have dealings with cats? I recall he had a faithful mutt but his kids might have dallied with pussies. I can't remember.

Oh, brilliant, brilliant poem, ferval - thank you for posting it.

Indeed, great poem, thanks for that.

@ferval wrote:

Did Marcus Didius Falco have dealings with cats? I recall he had a faithful mutt but his kids might have dallied with pussies. I can't remember.

I remember that his dog was called Nux, and the ox he briefly acquired as part of a disguise as a door-to-door, scrap lead-pipe merchant in Pompeii, was called Nero, but no I can't recall any cats  ... other than the aged ex-arena lion, Leonidas, who accidentally ate a relation ... one of his brother-in-laws I think it was.

Thanks for reminding me about Falco, it's been a while since I read them and just at the moment I could do with a bit of light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek historical escapism ...

What is about Oban that makes the cats there so adventurous, are they all descended from the ships' cats of old? Just a year after one moggy went for a wee cruise with Cal Mac, another one has had a 3 day trip back and forwards to Barra. Cat stows away on the Barra ferry