The Shocking Truth Behind Why Humans First Domesticated Cats, Revealed by Scientists

Ever wondered why humans started keeping cats in the first place? Spoiler alert: It’s not just because they’re cute little furballs who make your keyboard their new favorite napping spot. Turns out, the real story is a bit on the creepy side, dating all the way back to Ancient Egypt. While most of us now cherish cats for their quirky companionship (or tolerate their dramatic stares), early Egyptians had a far more…shall we say, sacrificial purpose for these mysterious creatures. So, before you chalk up your feline friend’s odd behavior to mere attitude, just remember—they’ve been bred for some seriously ancient rituals! Curious about how this all went down—or why millions of mummified cats once littered temples? Dive in and prepare to be fascinated. LEARN MORE.

A scientist has explained the very creepy reason why humans first started keeping cats.

Even if you class yourself firmly as team dog for house pets and can’t stand the four-legged felines wandering around, there’s no denying that they’re quite the popular choice for Brits.

And people have been keeping cats as pets for a long, long time with new studies uncovering more details about the origins.

It was previously thought that the domestication of the animals started about 9,000 years ago with North African wildcats.

Yet, scientists have found their research to point right back to Ancient Egypt. But back then, cats weren’t exactly kept as a bit of a companion or to chase away mice and rather for something that humans wouldn’t exactly get away with nowadays.

Pet cats have been knocking about for donks. (Getty Stock)

How many people own cats now?

According to Cats Protection’s 2024 survey about cats in the UK, it was found that there is around 10.6 million people who own cats. This marked a slight fall from 11 million in 2023 but still, pretty much a quarter of households own a little feline friend as a pet.

And the 2024 Global Pet Survey found the global pet population to be at around 1 billion with cats said to be the most popular pet to keep.

When did humans start keeping them as pets?

So, it was previously believed that the domestication began over 9,000 years ago when wildcats began hanging around the first farming villages.

This came in part with the same deterring of rodents that we benefit from with cats still. As North African wildcats started hunting the vermin attracted to farms, a domestication came about as both sides were benefitting. But now researchers are challenging this.

University of Exeter archaeological scientist, Dr Sean Doherty, is a lead author on one study that opposes the past idea.

“Our study challenges this narrative by reviewing the available osteological [bone], genetic and iconographic evidence,” he told BBC Science Focus. “We argue that domestication of the cat began in Egypt around the second to first millennium BC.”

Not quite the same reason as now. (Getty Stock)

The researchers believe misdating may be down to the size of cat bones and them shifting between soil over time.

“So we used radiocarbon dating to confirm their dates. This too showed that some cats were considerably more recent than they were believed to be,” Doherty added.

And while they do reckon keeping rodents away will have played a part in domesticating cats, back in the world of Ancient Egypt there was potentially a more important reason.

What was the creepy reason why?

Basically, religion was the key as it’s said the cats were sacred to the goddess Bastet.

So, millions of the animals were bred for the purpose of sacrifice.

“The connection between domestic cats and the Egyptian goddess Bastet reaches its zenith in the 1st millennium BC,” Doherty explained. “At temples dedicated to her, we find millions of mummified cats. There were so many that in the Victorian period, tonnes of them were brought back to Britain to be ground down and used for fertiliser.”

With all this breeding going on, they started picking out traits that made the cats easier to handle. And therefore, domesticated cats were a thing.

Lovely.