🐱🐱 Playing Cat 🐈🐈 Player Cat This cat was playing with my daughter and making fun with her. Cat From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigationJump to search This article is about the species that is commonly kept as a pet. For the cat family, see Felidae. For other uses, see Cat (disambiguation) and Cats (disambiguation). Domestic cat Cat poster 1.jpg Various types of the domestic cat Conservation status Domesticated Scientific classificationedit Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Carnivora Suborder: Feliformia Family: Felidae Subfamily: Felinae Genus: Felis Species: F. catus[1] Binomial name Felis catus[1] Linnaeus, 1758[2] Synonyms F. catus domesticus Erxleben, 1777[3] F. angorensis Gmelin, 1788 F. vulgaris Fischer, 1829 The cat (Felis catus) is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal.[1][2] It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is often referred to as the domestic cat to distinguish it from the wild members of the family.[4] A cat can either be a house cat, a farm cat or a feral cat; the latter ranges freely and avoids human contact.[5] Domestic cats are valued by humans for companionship and their ability to hunt rodents. About 60 cat breeds are recognized by various cat registries.[6] The cat is similar in anatomy to the other felid species: it has a strong flexible body, quick reflexes, sharp teeth and retractable claws adapted to killing small prey. Its night vision and sense of smell are well developed. Cat communication includes vocalizations like meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling and grunting as well as cat-specific body language. A predator that is most active at dawn and dusk, the cat is a solitary hunter but a social species. It can hear sounds too faint or too high in frequency for human ears, such as those made by mice and other small mammals.[7] It secretes and perceives pheromones.[8] Female domestic cats can have kittens from spring to late autumn, with litter sizes often ranging from two to five kittens.[9] Domestic cats are bred and shown at events as registered pedigreed cats, a hobby known as cat fancy. Failure to control breeding of pet cats by spaying and neutering, as well as abandonment of pets, resulted in large numbers of feral cats worldwide, contributing to the extinction of entire bird, mammal, and reptile species, and evoking population control.[10] Cats were first domesticated in the Near East around 7500 BC.[11] It was long thought that cat domestication was initiated in ancient Egypt, as since around 3100 BC veneration was given to cats in ancient Egypt.[12][13] As of 2021 there are an estimated 220 million owned and 480 million stray cats in the world.[14][15] As of 2017, the domestic cat was the second-most popular pet in the United States, with 95 million cats owned.[16][17][18] In the United Kingdom, 26% of adults have a cat with an estimated population of 10.9 million pet cats as of 2020.[19] Contents 1 Etymology and naming 2 Taxonomy 3 Evolution 3.1 Domestication 4 Characteristics 4.1 Size 4.2 Skeleton 4.3 Skull 4.4 Claws 4.5 Ambulation 4.6 Balance 5 Senses 5.1 Vision 5.2 Hearing 5.3 Smell 5.4 Taste 5.5 Whiskers 6 Behavior 6.1 Sociability 6.2 Communication 6.3 Grooming 6.4 Fighting 6.5 Hunting and feeding 6.6 Play 6.7 Reproduction 7 Lifespan and health 7.1 Disease 8 Ecology 8.1 Habitats 8.2 Feral cats 8.3 Impact on wildlife 9 Interaction with humans 9.1 Cat show 9.2 Infections transmitted from cats to humans 9.3 History and mythology 9.4 Superstitions and rituals 10 See also 11 References 12 External links Etymology and naming The origin of the English word 'cat', Old English catt, is thought to be the Late Latin word cattus, which was first used at the beginning of the 6th century.[20] It was suggested that the word 'cattus' is derived from an Egyptian precursor of Coptic ϣⲁⲩ šau, "tomcat", or its feminine form suffixed with -t.[21] The Late Latin word may be derived from another Afro-Asiatic[22] or Nilo-Saharan language. The Nubian word kaddîska "wildcat" and Nobiin kadīs are possible sources or cognates.[23] The Nubian word may be a loan from Arabic قَطّ‎ qaṭṭ ~ قِطّ qiṭṭ. It is "equally likely that the forms might derive from an ancient Germanic word, imported into Latin and thence to Greek and to Syriac and Arabic".[24] The word may be derived from Germanic and Northern European languages, and ultimately be borrowed from Uralic, cf. Northern Sami gáđfi, "female stoat", and Hungarian hölgy, "stoat"; from Proto-Uralic *käďwä, "female (of a furred animal)".[25] The English puss, extended as Tom cat, is attested from the 16th century and may have been introduced from Dutch poes or from Low German puuskatte, related to Swedish kattepus, or Norwegian pus, pusekatt. Similar forms exist in Lithuanian puižė and Irish puisín or puiscín. The etymology of this word is unknown, but it may have simply arisen from a sound used to attract a cat.[26][27]

• published: 10 May 2021
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