sound made by cats, but also meant “to see.”
The cat charm
Snake hunters
rodent killers. Various types of poisonous snakes live in Egypt, notably the infamous asp (the species Cleopatra used to kill herself). True, a venomous snake can kill a cat as well as a human, but it appears that the ancient Egyptians learned quickly that cats’ claws, teeth and swift reflexes made them competent snake killers. And, obviously, the cat’s sensitive hearing and sight made them watchful for snakes entering human habitations.
The oldest cat art
Deep mourning
ancient Egyptians did when a pet cat died. The whole family would go into mourning and, as an obvious outward sign of grief, shave off their eyebrows.
Sterile tom, false pregnancy
No kittens are growing inside her, and she doesn’t gain weight, of course, but she “feels” she is pregnant and may produce milk and seek out a secluded spot to bear the kittens—kittens that don’t exist, that is.
Ancient Egyptian humor
sacred or as beloved pets of the household—but not always. Humans have always had a sense of humor, even in ancient times. There survives from ancient Egypt, land of the sacred cat, a drawing on papyrus dating from about 1150 B.C., showing a large lady mouse and her brood, being waited on by a bevy of cat servants.
Ritualized mating
queen (who is in heat, naturally) is delivered in a carrier to a special queen pen in the stud house. This separates her, via wire or bars, from the male, though they can sniff each other and the queen can size up her potential partner.
Usually the first nose-to-nose encounter involves a lot of hissing and growling on her part, and the wire that separates them is for the male’s protection. Eventually she shows she is ready for the male by ceasing the growling and by rolling on the floor and producing a more welcoming sound. At that point she is allowed into the stud’s area, but not before a coarse “mating rug” is laid down for the two.
The stud recognizes this as “his” rug, one on which he has mated before. It provides the female a warm surface to grip for stability during the brief mating procedure. When the deed is done, the queen is put back in her own pen—but the two are later allowed to repeat the process, on the assumption that pregnancy is more likely to occur with more than one mating session.
Usually the first nose-to-nose encounter involves a lot of hissing and growling on her part, and the wire that separates them is for the male’s protection. Eventually she shows she is ready for the male by ceasing the growling and by rolling on the floor and producing a more welcoming sound. At that point she is allowed into the stud’s area, but not before a coarse “mating rug” is laid down for the two.
The stud recognizes this as “his” rug, one on which he has mated before. It provides the female a warm surface to grip for stability during the brief mating procedure. When the deed is done, the queen is put back in her own pen—but the two are later allowed to repeat the process, on the assumption that pregnancy is more likely to occur with more than one mating session.
Cat-head and lion-head
goddess. Bast was sometimes called the Lady of the East (meaning the east side of the Nile River), while Sekhmet was the Lady of the West. Over time the two similar goddesses were thought to be one and the same, both regarded as symbols of fertility, motherhood, hearth and home.
The old cat-woman dog-man cliché
Tomb paintings of wealthy Egyptians have often shown the happy family at home, with a cat sitting under the wife’s chair, a dog under her husband’s chair. We can safely assume that husband and wife played with each other’s pets, of course, but the stereotype is still there: cats for the women, dogs for the men.
Cat mummies
Egyptians believed that the afterlife was essentially like earthly life, they mummified mice to place in the tombs as food for the cat mummies. In 1890, over 300,000 cat mummies were found at one site in Egypt. Most were in cases of engraved wood, with the bodies wrapped in colored bandages. The world’s museums display cat mummies along with the human mummies.
No fang, no mate
Love bites
The Sunshine State cat
Florida is the very rare Florida panther. Scientists debate whether the panther is a subspecies of the cougar (see 437) or a separate species. The Florida panther certainly has a distinctive look, for although it generally looks like a cougar, it has a kinked tail, white spots and a distinctive swirl of fur in the middle of its back.
The biggest
striped, and though we assume they are all orangey in color, their color varies widely depending on location. Tigers in Russia and northern China are very light in color, and some are almost white. A male tiger may weigh up to five hundred pounds and stand five feet tall at the shoulders. Tigers do not have the beautiful manes that male lions possess, but older male tigers do have long spreading hairs on their cheeks. Tigers are good swimmers, but unlike most cats, they seldom climb trees.
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