There is so much you probably didn?t know about cats so we have compiled a list of the most surprising facts about the Crazy Cat. Don?t miss fact number 6!
1. The relationship between cats and humans goes back between 12,000 and 9,500 years.
Researchers believe that cats and humans began to develop a mutually beneficial relationship once agricultural settlements were recognized around 12,000 ago.
As humans began to deliberately cultivate crops, rather than hunting and gathering, they needed to store them.
The problem was that rodents would get into grains, eating them and polluting them with feces and diseases.
Humans realized that having cats around would deter the rodents, and so begun to allow the cats to shelter in their farms.
The arrangement worked well for cats, which had an abundance of prey attracted by the food stores.
Evidence that this symbiotic relationship developed into something akin to having a pet was discovered by archaeologists in Cyprus in the 1980s.
They uncovered a burial of a human next to a wildcat which dated back around 9,500 years!
2. Suspicion of cats may have caused The Great Plague in Europe.
At some stage during the Middle Ages, cats became demonized in Europe and were associated with the devil and witches. People believed they brought evil with them and as a result, they have shooed away from homes and often killed.
This view was so natural, eve Pope Innocent VIII ordered the killing of cats, pronouncing them demonic.
Unfortunately, without as many predators around, rats began to multiply in the cities. These rats carried disease and it is now known that their bites spread the Great Plague which killed an estimated 25 million people and lingered in Europe for centuries afterward.
3. Cats are afraid of water because their ancestors didn?t know how to swim.
Cats are notoriously aquaphobic and it is believed that this is caused by evolutionary reasons. The ancestors of modern-day cats lived in dry, arid deserts and would have had no need to swim everywhere.
Cats that did go into the water would likely have died and so did not pass along their genes.
Those cats which were too afraid of water would have mated and passed this aversion to water down through generations to the new day cat.
4. Cats sleep for about half of their life
The average cat sleeps between 16-18 hours a day which means that your pet is asleep for about two-thirds of its life.
Not only do cats sleep a vast amount, but they also dream in a very similar way to humans.
5. The CIA tried to turn cats into spies.
During the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, the CIA launched Project Acoustic Kitty. Their plan was to use cats to spy on the Kremlin and the Soviet embassies by implanting microphones into cat?s ear canals, a small radio transmitter in its skull and thin wire
Under its fur. The first operation was a success and the cat?s mission was to eavesdrop on two Soviet men in a park in Washington D.C. The cat was out nearby, but promptly hit by a taxi and died.
