Cats

I wanted to find out about where cats originated from.  I have been doing a lot of research of lately on the evolution of man kind. I am really a bird person but love all animals.  Cats are ruling my life at the moment, and for those who have cats, will know what I mean by this.  People think they can just put very young kittens in my garden and I should look after them.  Which I do. I have hand raised quite a few kittens successfully and have find it very rewarding.  The latest nearly died and without a friend's help he probably would of.  His nature is a lot different from all the other kittens that I have raised up to date.  He is a "monster".  He likes playing rough.


The cat existed for millions of years before the first dog.  The ancestor of the cat was called miacis which lived about 65.8 - 55.8 million years ago.

Miacis is the common ancestor of all land-dwelling carnivores, which also includes the dog.

There were other cat-like species before that but Proailurus is considered to be the first “true” cat.  Proailurus appeared about 30 million years ago.  Proailurus means “before the cat”.  Another name is leman’s dawn cat.



There is a gap in fossils after the appearance of the leman’s dawn cat for about 10 million years though they persisted until around 14 million years ago.



A new species called the Pseudaelurus appeared.  Pseudaelurus crossed over to North America by

way of the Bering land bridge from surviving populations in Asia 18.5 million years ago. All modern-day cats are descended from Pseudaelurus.



Pseudaelurus is a prehistoric cat that lived in Europe, Asia and North America in the Miocene approximately 18.5 to 8 million years ago. It is an ancestor of today's felines and pantherines as well as the extinct machairodont saber-tooth, and is a successor to Proailurus. It originated from Eurasia and was the first felid to reach North America, when it entered the continent at about 18.5 Ma ending a 'cat-gap' of 7 million years. The slender proportions of the animal, together with its short, viverrid-like legs, suggest that it may have been an agile climber of trees.

Nimravids and barbourofelids were sabre-toothed cat like animals of the nimravidae and barbourofelidae.  They are not “true cats” of the family felidae but they are closely related to felids

Physically, some Nimravidae and Barbourofelidae resembled the saber-toothed cat

Smilodon, which would not appear until many millions of years later. Nimravidae also became extinct in North America during the "cat gap." The barbourofelids, another feliform cat-like family with saber-toothed morphology are sisters.

Cats began to associate for humans towards the end of the Stone Age.  In Egypt cats were accept in households about 5000 years ago.  Many of these breed evolved from ancient cats. The cat was used to hunt fish and birds and catch rates and mice.  The cat was considered so valuable that laws protected them.