📸 World Cat Day; adorable house tigers

📸 World Cat Day; adorable house tigers

World Cat Day is held every year on August 8. In 2002, it was proposed by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), with the aim of raising global awareness about the welfare of cats, promoting responsible pet ownership, and encouraging the adoption of cats.

Their anatomical features, such as their round heads and skeletal structure, indicate that more than 40 known species in the cat family share a common ancestor. This common ancestor most likely lived in Asia about 10 to 12 million years ago.

Earlier, it was thought that the true domestication, or “taming,” of cats took place about 3,600 to 4,700 years ago in Egypt. But some newer evidence suggests that cat domestication probably began around 10,000 years ago, or even earlier, in the Middle East, in the “Fertile Crescent” region. The oldest recorded evidence of domestication relates to a cat that was intentionally buried about 9,500 years ago in Cyprus, along with its owner in a grave.

Archaeological evidence shows that about 2,900 years ago in Egypt, in the form of the goddess Bastet, they became an “official deity.”