Relationship with man has be one of worship and one of scorn

Regarded as a goddess and an instrument of the devil.

As cats became domesticated they lived alongside of man, unlike dogs who both lived with man and were later used by man for specific purposes. Dogs were bred for specific duties, their physical properties molded as such and broke into the multitude of dog breeds known today. Cats, being cats, were never used nor developed in this manner and therefore, there are significanly fewer breeds of cats. Their breeds and varients became derived from both spontanious genetic mutation and physical isolation of cat populations, as well as later man's intervetion in creating breeds to an imagined goal.


Domestication came about with cats began living near man in order to hunt the rodents that preyed on farmers' grain stores. Man realized that having cats keeping check on the rodent population helped them . Indeed this arrangement was what saved many a rural farmer during the bubonic plague outbreaks during the Middle Ages. As the rodents were the vector for the fleas which carried the virus, having cats that killed the rats effectively kept the plague from dessimating the rural populations.

Cats carried on ships for the same reason