Cat Let’s Face It, I Was Crazy Before The Cats Shirt
As of 2016, about 12% of households have cats, for a total of 580,000 domestic cats in the metropolis (the average cat owner has 1.4 cats, which sounds uncomfortable for the fractional feline). Interestingly, there are about 340,000 dogs, which is the same 2:1 ratio that Victorian researchers observed in the customers of cat’s meat sellers. London is also the region with the lowest cat ownership of any in the UK, which isn’t surprising with a city with so many rented flats and little garden access.Being slightly less literal, our collections are filled with images of cats. All of these examples come from the time of the suffrage movement, the campaignaimed at securing women’s right to vote from about 1900-18. However, both of the postcards above, which look rather sweet to modern eyes (at least mine) were designed to mock the suffragette movement, suggesting that giving women the vote was as absurd as letting cats vote in electionsThe “Advokate for Women’s Rights” is wearing traditional suffragette colours of green, purple and white. The postcard with a kitten mewing “I want my vote!” was sent, anonymously, to Christabel Pankhurst, the prominent women’s rights campaigner, in October 1908. It’s a reminder that harassment of prominent women in politics predates the internet eraThis poster, created by the women’s suffrage movement, denounces the “Cat and Mouse Act”. This refers to the Prisoner’s Temporary Discharge (for Ill Health) Act passed by the Liberal government in 1913. The act allowed imprisoned suffragettes who used hunger striking to protest to be released temporarily, only to be re-imprisoned once they had recovered. It was this technique of “Letting them go, only to catch them again” that suffragettes denounced as cruel – as cruel in fact as a cat playing with its prey. This fierce, almost sabre-tooted cat is an interesting contrast to the cuddly anti-suffragette kittens.
Cat Let’s Face It, I Was Crazy Before The Cats Shirt
The first evidence of the domestication of cats is a grave from Cyprus, which is approximately 9,200 years old. Cats are not native to Cyprus, indicating the feline had been brought over to Cyprus from elsewhere. And its presence within the grave indicates its importance within the culture. However, it is believed the history of cats began even earlier. 10,000 years ago, humans began settling in the Fertile Crescent (what is now the Near East). They farmed, producing a surplus of food that had to be stored. This surplus drew in rodents, who started congregating around the stored grains and other foods. This had the effect of also attracting their natural predator: the wild cat. Because of the abundant food source around humans, cats learned to tolerate the presence of humans and other cats during mealtimes. For the farmers, cats provided pest control. They were brought on travel across the seas to other parts of Europe and the Mediterranean to control rodents. Egyptian cats were domesticated later than the wild cats of the Fertile Crescent. They were revered for their ability to kill venomous snakes and gained religious importance. They were taken aboard river boats on the Nile River to keep the venomous river snakes at bay. They were later taken on longer voyages, even appearing on Viking ships. Cats today are very similar to ancient wild cats. They were not selectively bred like dogs and little was done to alter their genetics or behavior except to make them more docile.
