Did you know that just 70 years ago, few cats lived entirely indoors at all?
In fact, for more than 10,000 years, cats have lived outdoor lives, sharing the environment with birds and wildlife.
Understanding cats’ place in history and human evolution reveals how very recently domestic cats came indoors and how millions of this species—feral cats—continue to live healthy lives outdoors today, as all domestic cats are biologically adapted to do.
Below is a brief history of cats and how they have come to be:
Origins of the Domestic Cat
Cats began their unique relationship with humans 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, the geographic region where some of the earliest developments in human civilization occurred (encompassing modern day parts of West Asia). One such development was agriculture. As people abandoned their nomadic lifestyle and settled permanently to farm the land, stored grain attracted rodents. Taking advantage of this new, abundant food source, Middle Eastern wildcats, or felix silvestris lybica, preyed on the rodents and decided to stick around these early towns, scavenging the garbage that all human societies inevitably produce—just as feral cats do today.
Over thousands of years, a new species of cat eventually evolved that naturally made its home around people: felis catus. Today, pet, stray, and feral cats belong to this species that we call the domestic cat.
Cats Travel the World
Cats formed a mutually beneficial relationship with people, and some scientists argue that cats domesticated themselves. Especially prized as mousers on ships, cats traveled with people around the globe.
Catering to Cats: Inventing the Indoor Cat
Keeping cats indoors all the time was not possible—nor was it even a goal—until several important 20th century innovations: refrigeration, kitty litter, and the prevalence of spaying and neutering.
Even though these changes to our modern lifestyle make keeping cats inside possible, biologically, cats are the same as they were thousands of years ago. Their role in our society has evolved and broadened over the last hundred years, but their basic behaviors and needs haven’t changed.
Cat Food
Unlike dogs, who have undergone many physical changes since domestication and evolved to survive on an omnivorous diet, cats haven’t changed much, and still require a high-protein diet. Before the development of refrigeration and canned cat food in the 20th century, feeding indoor cats who could not supplement their diets by hunting would have been impossible for most Americans, who could not afford extra fresh meat or fish.8
Kitty Litter
Up until the 1950s, cats roamed American neighborhoods freely, using the great outdoors as their litter area. Pans filled with dirt or newspaper were used indoors by a few cat owners, but it wasn’t until the first clay litter was accidentally discovered in 1947 and the subsequent marketing of the Tidy Cats® brand in the 1960s that litter boxes really caught on. With the invention of cat litter, cats rocketed to popularity as indoor pets, but their outdoor survival skills remain.9
Spaying and Neutering
Until spaying and neutering pets became available and accessible around the 1930s, keeping intact cats indoors was messy business during mating season. Techniques had been developed for sterilizing livestock, but American households would have had a hard time finding a veterinarian trained to safely neuter pets before this time.10 Just as cats found their own food and litter areas outdoors, 20th century cats bred and gave birth outdoors as they have done since their origins in the Fertile Crescent 10,000 years ago. While some of those cats’ offspring can – if brought into human contact when they are young enough – successfully be socialized and integrated into human homes, many cats remain outside, living the same outdoor lives they always have, with or without human contact. Although adult feral cats—cats that are not socialized to people—cannot become indoor pets, neutering and returning them to their outdoor home improves their lives.
