Aesthetics of the Cat
On Earth, not everyone is an animal lover, but the majority are. I grew up with both cats and dogs. In 2020, I was granted an Emotional Support Animal designation for Harper, my black cat. She is the cutest cat you will ever meet, and she can easily convert even the most adamant anti-cat person. She gives off an air of independence, playfulness, outspokenness, and mystery. Some cats, like Archie, my cat at home, are more distant, sarcastic, and lazy. Egypt, Rome, India, and China all have a history of cat artifacts with deep symbolic meanings that relate back to early human civilization.
The Gayer-Anderson cat, an ancient Egyptian bronze statue housed in London’s British Museum, is one of the most well-known cat antiquities. There were tens of thousands of bronze statues of gods in temples all around Egypt, including the one where this one was most likely discovered. Only the wealthy could have ordered anything as exquisite as this cat, which is adorned with pricey metals. Cats were a representation of the goddess Bastet in ancient Egypt. The goddess Bastet was frequently depicted as a cat-headed woman or as a cat. Cats were also well-liked because they kept mice, rats, and snakes out of their homes. A few tomb paintings depict cats lounging next to their owners, occasionally with
food nearby. Cats were grown in great numbers in some parts of Egypt so that Bastet worshipers might honor the goddess by paying for a cat’s
ritual burial.
In the early years of the Roman Empire, cats were not always the popular option for pets. Most individuals kept pet weasels or even snakes inside their homes to ward against pests. But from the second to the fifth centuries, more owners started to use cats. In a temple on Mount Aventine dedicated to Libertas, the goddess of freedom and independence, a cat is seen placed at the feet of the goddess. She wears a velvet Phrygian cap worn by freed Roman slaves that signifies liberty, the cat represents independence.
In ancient India, the Ramayana and the Mahbhrata are two of the most significant Hindu epics that mention cats. Even Charles Perrault’s “Puss in Boots” tale from the 17th century may have been inspired by an Indian collection of stories that dates back more than two millennia. In older Vedic literature, cats are not often mentioned as pets; nevertheless,
around the fifth century B.C., cats are more frequently mentioned as domestic pets.
Some of the earliest proof that cats coexisted with humans in China dates back 5,300 years. One study examined the isotopic and archaeological evidence of cats discovered at the farming site Quanhucun in the nation’s northwest. Because the cat is still there, this indicates that the animals were not entirely carnivorous. In other words, the cats there were in an early stage of domestication, according to the authors. In an article about cat domestication sourced from Washington University of St. Louis; “Cats were thought to have first been domesticated in ancient Egypt, where they were kept some 4,000 years ago, but more recent research suggests close relations with humans may have occurred much earlier, including the discovery of a wild cat buried with a human 10,000 years ago in Cyprus.”
