Cat

The cat Felis catus is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. it is the only domesticated nature in the style Felidae as alive as is often covered to as the domestic cat to distinguish it from the wild members of the family. A cat can either be a office cat, a farm cat or a feral cat; the latter ranges freely as living as avoids human contact. domestic cats are valued by humans for companionship & their ability to kill rodents. approximately 60 cat breeds are recognized by various cat registries.

The cat is similar in anatomy to the other felid species: it has a strong flexible body, quick reflexes, sharp teeth as well as 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 living as cat-specific body language. A predator that is almost active at dawn and dusk crepuscular, 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(a) as those exposed by mice and other small mammals. Cats also secrete and perceive pheromones.

Female domestic cats can have kittens from spring to gradual autumn, with litter sizes often ranging from two to five kittens. Domestic cats are bred and produced at events as registered pedigreed cats, a hobby call as cat fancy. Population control of cats may be effected by spaying and neutering, but their proliferation and the abandonment of pets has resulted in large numbers of feral cats worldwide, contributing to the extinction of entire bird, mammal, and reptile species.

It was long thought that cat domestication began in ancient Egypt, where cats were venerated from around 3100 BC, but recent advances in archaeology and genetics defecate shown that their domestication occured in Western Asia around 7500 BC.

As of 2021,[update] the domestic cat was the second nearly popular pet in the United States, with 95.6 million cats owned and around 42 million households own at least one cat. In the United Kingdom, 26% of adults have a cat with an estimated population of 10.9 million pet cats as of 2020.[update]

Taxonomy

The scientific name Felis catus was proposed by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 for a domestic cat. Felis catus domesticus was proposed by Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben in 1777. Felis daemon proposed by Konstantin Alekseevich Satunin in 1904 was a black cat from the Transcaucasus, later forwarded as a domestic cat.

In 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature ruled that the domestic cat is a distinct species, namely Felis catus. In 2007, it was considered a subspecies, F. silvestris catus, of the European wildcat F. silvestris following results of phylogenetic research. In 2017, the IUCN Cat Classification Taskforce followed the recommendation of the ICZN in regarding the domestic cat as a distinct species, Felis catus.