Cyprus-Forum.com

[Get Real!]

The cats in the mountains Timbo are predominantly Partridge hunters.

[Tim Drayton]

According to page 100 of Wild Cats of the World by Mel Sunquist, Fiona Sunquist:

Wildcats do not occur naturally on Cyprus

Perhaps they have got it wrong, but this is the situation as far as I know it.

Nope, no tigers, lions, pumas, lynxes, Scottish Wildcats, leopards ...

No, that was wildcats (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat), not wild cats.

Still, I am British, so by the logic of this forum, I am wrong.

[GreekIslandGirl]

According to page 100 of Wild Cats of the World by Mel Sunquist, Fiona Sunquist:

Wildcats do not occur naturally on Cyprus

Perhaps they have got it wrong, but this is the situation as far as I know it.

Nope, no tigers, lions, pumas, lynxes, Scottish Wildcats, leopards ...

No, that was wildcats (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat), not wild cats.

Still, I am British, so by the logic of this forum, I am wrong.

Let's not get silly now. The book to which you refer is " Wild Cats" and has pictures of a tiger, lynx and leopard from what I can see.

[RichardB]

There are absolutely no cats out in the hills, by the way, they are also only to be found in built up areas, which shows that they are feral and not wild.

That's totally wrong - they are just harder to spot than in the middle of towns.

This forum is for lunatics.

Probably the only thing all forummers will agree on this year

[Tim Drayton]

According to page 100 of Wild Cats of the World by Mel Sunquist, Fiona Sunquist:

Wildcats do not occur naturally on Cyprus

Perhaps they have got it wrong, but this is the situation as far as I know it.

Nope, no tigers, lions, pumas, lynxes, Scottish Wildcats, leopards ...

No, that was wildcats (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat), not wild cats.

Still, I am British, so by the logic of this forum, I am wrong.

Let's not get silly now. The book to which you refer is " Wild Cats" and has pictures of a tiger, lynx and leopard from what I can see.

Correct, and it also has a chapter on the wildcat. I would have though that somebody who claims to have had an illustrious academic career would be capable of assessing the literature in a bit more detail, apart from just looking at the pictures.

[Mik]

How about 'Continental Drift' which would mean that it would be possible for there to be a native cat on Cyprus at one time.
This web site shows all Wildcats, http://www.wotcat.com
Looking at the 'Asian' section and 'African' you can see characteristics of our good old 'Cyprus Moggie'
Bugger said I wasn't gonna comment again didn't I? Must be the pills again.

[Tim Drayton]

Ooops. There again I might be wrong:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_wildcat

“The wild, non urban cats of the Mediterranean islands of Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Crete and Cyprus are also often considered to be African wildcats rather than European; this is backed by a 2007 DNA study, except in the case of the Sicilian population which was determined to be of European origin.”

I have trekked many kilometres through the wild, open country in Cyprus, and have never seen any of these. Perhaps they are there somewhere.

[GreekIslandGirl]

No, that was wildcats (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat), not wild cats.

Still, I am British, so by the logic of this forum, I am wrong.

Let's not get silly now. The book to which you refer is " Wild Cats" and has pictures of a tiger, lynx and leopard from what I can see.

Correct, and it also has a chapter on the wildcat. I would have though that somebody who claims to have had an illustrious academic career would be capable of assessing the literature in a bit more detail, apart from just looking at the pictures.

"Looking at the pictures" is all I can do as it's a link to a book you seem to be in possession of. I have not seen this book other than the cover from the link - so how can I assess it in any detail? But, I think at the heart of the problem is what we mean by "wild cats", "Wild Cats", "wildcats" and "feral cats" ..........

(Besides, no need to resort to personal attacks as I've never made any claims to illustriousness.)

[RichardB]

Dig discovery is oldest 'pet cat'
By Paul Rincon
BBC News Online science staff


The cats at Shillourokambos may have been like this African wildcat
The oldest known evidence of people keeping cats as pets may have been found by archaeologists.
The discovery of a cat buried with what could be its owner in a Neolithic grave on Cyprus suggests domestication of cats had begun 9,500 years ago.

It was thought the Egyptians were first to domesticate cats, with the earliest evidence dating to 2,000-1,900 BC.

French researchers writing in Science magazine show that the process actually began much earlier than that.

The evidence comes from the Neolithic, or late stone age, village of Shillourokambos on Cyprus, which was inhabited from the 9th to the 8th millennia BC.

Cat culture

"The cat we found in the grave may have been pre-domesticated - something in between savage and domestic. Alternatively, it's possible it was really domestic," Professor Jean Guilaine, of the CNRS Centre d'Anthropologie in Toulouse, France, told BBC News Online.


The cat (top) was killed to be buried together with its "master" (bottom)
"We have this situation of the person and the cat. This same situation of men and dogs are known much earlier from the Natufian culture of Israel which dates to 12-11,000 BC."

The complete cat skeleton was found about 40cm from a human burial. The similar states of preservation and positions of the burials in the ground suggest the person and the cat were buried together.

The person, who is about 30 years of age, but of unknown sex, was buried with offerings such as polished stone, axes, flint tools and ochre pigment.

Based on this the researchers argue that the person was of high status and may have had a special relationship with cats. Cats might have had religious as well as material significance to the Stone Age Cypriots, the French archaeologists add.

'Religious animal'

"It's difficult to say the cat was a religious animal but it probably played a role in the symbolic and imaginative world of these people," Professor Guilaine explained.

During the Neolithic, when agriculture was beginning to spread from the Near East, grain storage would have attracted large mice populations. So cats may have been encouraged to settle in villages to control the mice.


Shillourokambos was a thriving village in the late stone age
"If this hypothesis is true, cats could have been attracted into the villages as early as there were mice. These mice in the Near East were present as early as 12,000 years ago," co-author Dr Jean-Denis Vigne, of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, told BBC News Online.

It seems the eight-month-old cat in the Cypriot burial was killed in order to be buried with the person. The skeleton shows no signs of butchering, suggesting that it was treated as an individual in death.

But burnt cat bones from a similar period at the site, attest to the fact that humans did eat the animals on certain occasions.

The cat specimen is large and best resembles the African wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica), rather than present-day domestic cats.

There are no native feline species on Cyprus, so the authors presume any cats must have been introduced by humans.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3611453.stm


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[Sotos]

There is a huge difference, actually, between feral cats, which are dependent on people and wild cats, such as those living in the north of Scotland, which are capable of living in the wild and hunting for their own food.

According to the dictionary "feral" is synonymous to "wild". Just because you find more cats in cities this doesn't mean that cats can not exist without humans. They are like cockroaches ... you can find more cockroaches in cities ... especially the dirty parts... but this doesn't mean that cockroaches need humans to survive... we just make their life easier so their population grows under certain circumstances Cats can hunt ... but they will just not bother if they are fed directly by humans or if they can find their food in the trash with minimal effort!