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Cat Presentation

Cats were first domesticated about 10,000 years ago in Egypt. Egyptians revered cats as they controlled rodents and reduced disease. Cats became sacred and were mummified after death. In Japan, cats were introduced in the 6th century to control pests threatening the silk industry. During the Middle Ages in Europe, cats were associated with witchcraft and the plague and millions were killed, worsening the pandemic. Cats rebounded and are now one of the most popular pets worldwide with over 500 million domestic cats.

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Son Tran
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215 views

Cat Presentation

Cats were first domesticated about 10,000 years ago in Egypt. Egyptians revered cats as they controlled rodents and reduced disease. Cats became sacred and were mummified after death. In Japan, cats were introduced in the 6th century to control pests threatening the silk industry. During the Middle Ages in Europe, cats were associated with witchcraft and the plague and millions were killed, worsening the pandemic. Cats rebounded and are now one of the most popular pets worldwide with over 500 million domestic cats.

Uploaded by

Son Tran
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Cat In Different Cultures

Presenter: Son Tran Click to edit Master subtitle style

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Egypt
Egyptians were known to be the first people to domesticate and use cats in their daily live.

Cats wereknown inAncient Egyptasmau.

Based on recent DNA comparisons of living species, it has been estimated that cats were firstdomesticatedfrom theMiddle Eastern subspeciesof theWildcatabout 10,000 years ago in theFertile Crescent.

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Egypt
The cats controlled the rat population which reduced disease and deaths and also allowed a larger supply of food for the poor. This therefore changed the quality of living for the Egyptians and cats become a sacred creature representing life.

As a revered animal and one important to Egyptian society and religion, some cats received the same mummification after death as humans. Mummified cats were given in offering to Bast.

Bast is the god with human body and a head of cat. Her image represents the deity representing protection,fertility, andmotherhood.

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Egypt
How important are the cats to ancient Egyptians?
TheGreekhistorianHerodotuswrote that in the event of a fire, men would guard the fire to make certain that no cats ran into the flame. When a cat died, the household would go into mourning as if for a human relative, and would often shave their eyebrows to signify their loss.

Another Greek historian,Diodorus Siculus witnessed the chariot of aRomansoldier accidentally run over an Egyptian cat. An outraged mob gathered and, despite pleas from pharaohPtolemy XII, killed the soldier.

The pharaoh's were mummified and buried with statues of cats. This represented good luck and safe companionship to the afterlife.

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Japan
Cats are known in Japanese as neko. They are also called bobbed-tail cats due to the shape of their tails.

Domestic cats were introduced into Japan from China and Korea in the early sixth century, but whether these cats had bobbed tails is unclear.

Only accounts of cats left from ancient time are the tales and folklores.

One well-known tale tells of a small, short-tailed female cat named Maneki-Neko that was said to have beckoned to passersby and that was associated with good fortune.

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Japan
At some point between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the Japanese silk industry grew in importance and when mice threatened to destroy the silkworms and their cocoons from which the precious silk was harvested, the government decided that cats should be set free to protect the silk industry and the grain stores.

The Japanese Bobtail then became a street cat instead of a pampered household pet. Japanese Bobtails thus became the "street cats" of Japan. In the United States, you are likely to see Bobtails only in cat shows and in the homes of breeders and fanciers, but in Japan today this breed can be seen in the streets and alleys, as well as in the averageBobtails American cat-loving home. Japanese Bobtails

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Japan

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Japan

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America
Cats were used upon Ships on voyages of discovery during the 15th/16th Century to control rodent population and disease.
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When Christopher Columbus discovered America cats from the Ship were left in the country and flourished. The breed today known as the American Shorthair is thought to have originated from the British Shorthair which was believed to be used on those ships.
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America

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America

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The Fall Of Cats


During the middle Ages cats were associated with superstition and witch craft, they were considered animals of sin and were thought to be associated with Satan.

When the Black Death (The Plague) started in 1348 the rulers ordered the killing of all cats who were the initial suspect of the devil work. As a result, the rodents populated Europe and worsened the pandemic. Many believe that the mass cull of cats cost millions of lives where the population of Europe was killed off by 50%.

For around 700 years after the first millennium, the cat was associated with witches and evil. In the town of Metz in France, hundreds of cats were burned alive on the second Wednesday in Lent, as a ritual sacrifice of witches.

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The Rise Of Cats


Cats flourished in the 20th Century when they were introduced once again as household pets by Queen Victoria of England and have become a key part of modern society. Kings and Queens, Presidents and Prime Ministers have all owned pet cats during the twentieth century.

New breeds were created such as the Sphynx, the Bengal and the Himalayan. During the 1990s cats overtook the dog as the worlds favorite and most common pet and today there is thought to be close to 500,000,000 domestic cats in the world.

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Notable Quotes About Cat "One reason we admire cats is for their proficiency in one-

upmanship. They always seem to come out on top, no matter what they are doing, or pretend they do." - Barbara Webster, film director "I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior." - Hippolyte Taine, Frenchcriticandhistorian

"No matter how much cats fight, there always seems to be plenty of kittens." - Abraham Lincoln, American president

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Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Perry

http://white-persian-cats.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/himalayan

http://www.catsinfo.com/history.html http://archaeology.about.com/od/domestications/qt/cat.htm http://www.richeast.org/htwm/cats/Cats.html

http://www.societasviaromana.net/Collegium_VitaQuotidiana/pets.php
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