Flint Elsa - The dog owners handbook

Strange as this may seem, cats and pet rabbits can become good friends your cat may even find its way into the rabbit hutch and laze in the sawdust with its rabbit companions.

Kittens are born with an excellent ability to detect movement not even this well-camouflaged green cricket is safe from the quick-witted kitten.

Through their interaction with pets, children learn about love, death and respect for other living creatures.

Despite their reputation for aloofness, it is not unusual for a cat to head-butt and lick its owner to show affection.

T hose of us who are owned by cats may well subscribe to the theory that humans didnt domesticate the cat at all, but that the cat domesticated itself by walking into, adapting to and (in many cases) taking over peoples lives. With few exceptions the modern domestic cat remains independent and solitary, and has an indefinable wild streak. It gives you a look that implies: I may live in your household, but dont expect me to conform.

Male lions (Panthera leo) within a pride can be particularly tolerant of cubs.

A distant ancestor of todays domestic cat may have been Martellis wild cat (Felis lumensis), a species now extinct. It was similar in size to todays small wild cats. About 600,000900,000 years ago it may have given rise to Felis silvestris, from which three distinct types evolved according to the region and environment in which they lived. These were the central European or Forest wild cat (F. silvestris silvestris), the Asiatic desert cat (F. silvestris ornata) and the African wild cat (F. silvestris lybica). The latter inhabited most of Asia and North Africa, and because the process of domestication of the cat occurred mainly in the Middle East, the African wild cat was almost certainly the principal ancestor of modern domestic cats.

For the cat, as for other domestic animals, the process of domestication occurred over a long period of time. Wild cats would have associated with humans once the latter stopped being hunter-gatherers and formed permanent settlements, grew grain crops and set up grain stores. Grain stores would have attracted mice and rats, which in turn would have attracted wild cats.

Any sensible agriculturist would quickly have seen the advantage of encouraging these cats to help control the vermin, so a loose but mutually beneficial association would have been forged.

Many statues were made of the Egyptian cat goddess Bast. This bronze figure is dated between 664 and 525 BC .

Just when the process of domestication started is unclear, though, and our estimates rely on archaeological discoveries and the excavation of cat remains that can be shown to be closely associated with humans. Although various cat remains have been found in Egyptian archaeological sites dating to 6700 BC , there is no firm evidence that these were domesticated animals, and they are more likely to have been wild cats. If you accept that finding a cat skeleton buried with a person is evidence that the cat was domesticated, then a 7000-year-old burial site at Mostagedda, in Egypt, is evidence enough. There, excavations revealed a man buried with two animals at his feet: a cat and a gazelle.

If this doesnt convince you, then you need to move forward 2500 years and to the earliest depiction of cats in Egyptian tomb art. Cat remains recovered from an archaeological site in the Indus Valley, dated at 2000 BC , could well be from a domesticated variety, and paintings and inscriptions from the same period portray cats in situations that suggest that they were domesticated.