On May 27th, 1941, the German battleship

Bismarck sank in a fierce firefight,

leaving only 118 of her

2,200 crew members alive.

But when a British destroyer came to

collect the prisoners,

they found an unexpected survivor -

a black and white

cat clinging to a floating plank.

For the next several months this cat

hunted rats and raised British morale -

until a sudden torpedo strike shattered

the hull and sank the ship.

But, miraculously, not the cat.

Nicknamed Unsinkable Sam,

he rode to Gibraltar with the rescued crew

and served as a ship cat on three more vessels –

one of which also sank - before

retiring to the Belfast Home for Sailors.

Many may not think of cats as serviceable

sailors,

or cooperative companions
of any kind.

But cats have been working alongside

humans for thousands of years -

helping us just as often as we help them.

So how did these solitary creatures go

from wild predator to naval officer

to sofa sidekick?

The domestication of the modern house cat

can be traced back to more than

10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent,

at the start of the Neolithic era.

People were learning to bend nature

to their will,

producing much more food than

farmers could eat at one time.
These Neolithic farmers stored their excess
grain in large pits and short, clay silos.

But these stores of food attracted

hordes of rodents,

as well as their predator,

Felis silvestris lybica -

the wildcat found across North Africa

and Southwest Asia.

These wildcats were fast, fierce,

carnivorous hunters.

And they were remarkably similar in size

and appearance to today’s domestic cats.

The main differences being that ancient

wildcats were more muscular,

had striped coats, and were less social

towards other cats and humans.

The abundance of prey in rodent-infested

granaries

drew in these typically solitary animals.

And as the wildcats learned to tolerate the

presence of humans

and other cats during mealtime,

we think that farmers likewise tolerated

the cats in exchange for free pest control.

The relationship was so beneficial that

the cats migrated with Neolithic farmers

from Anatolia into Europe

and the Mediterranean.

Vermin were a major

scourge of the seven seas.

They ate provisions and

gnawed at lines of rope,

so cats had long since become

essential sailing companions.

Around the same time these Anatolian

globe trotting cats set sail,

the Egyptians domesticated

their own local cats.
Revered for their ability to dispatch
venomous snakes, catch birds, and kill rats,

domestic cats became important

to Egyptian religious culture.

They gained immortality in frescos,

hieroglyphs, statues, and even tombs,

mummified alongside their owners.

Egyptian ship cats cruised the Nile,

holding poisonous river snakes at bay.

And after graduating to larger vessels,

they too began to migrate

from port to port.

During the time of the Roman Empire,

ships traveling between India and Egypt

carried the lineage of the

central Asian wildcat F. s. ornata.

Centuries later, in the Middle Ages,

Egyptian cats voyaged up to the Baltic Sea

on the ships of Viking seafarers.

And both the Near Eastern

and North African wildcats

– probably tamed at this point --

continued to travel across Europe,

eventually setting sail for

Australia and the Americas.

Today, most house cats have descended

from either the Near Eastern

or the Egyptian lineage of F.s.lybica.

But close analysis of the genomes and

coat patterns of modern cats

tells us that unlike dogs,

which have undergone

centuries of selective breeding,

modern cats are genetically

very similar to ancient cats.

And apart from making them

more social and docile,
we’ve done little to alter
their natural behaviors.

In other words, cats today are more or

less as they’ve always been: Wild animals.

Fierce hunters. Creatures that don’t

see us as their keepers.

And given our long history together,

they might not be wrong.