Читать онлайн «Test Your Cat 2: Genius Edition: Confirm your cat’s undiscovered genius!»
Автор Holland Simon
HarperCollins
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published by HarperCollins
Text copyright © 2015 Simon Holland
Illustrations by Erica Salcedo Saiz
Cover and interior design by Rosamund Saunders
Cat-sultant: Carron Brown
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN 978-0-00-794929-8
EPub Edition © October 2016 ISBN 9780008150426
Version: 2016-09-13
In memory of Rupert, the Über-Cat.
And to Smudge, who always scores well.
Contents
It’s fair to say that cats have always had a head start on humans. The distant ancestors of cats appeared about 30 million years ago, while ours came about only two or three million years ago – with modern humans dragging their heels (or the backs of their hands?) until their eventual appearance on the evolutionary scene roughly 200,000 years ago.
We now know that humans have been living with cats, or keeping them as pets, for over 12,000 years. So by the time of the ancient Egyptians – who elevated cats to a god-like status about 3,600 years ago – cats had already had more than enough time to get their paws under the antique coffee tables of some of the most successful human civilizations in history.
When cats and humans first crossed paths, it would have been obvious to cats that humans were there for the taking.
These docile, pliable, manipulable mammals were lolloping about on two legs – which seemed to be some kind of ‘amazing novelty’ – and were far too impressed by fire to notice the feline forms slipping tasty marshmallows from their campfire sticks.‘At last,’ thought the cats, ‘our days of foraging and fending for ourselves are over. We’ve finally found a species gullible enough to do it all for us. ’
But over the last 10,000 years or so, maybe domestic cats have become a bit complacent. And maybe there just aren’t enough challenges anymore . . . not enough stresses left in feline life to keep cats shimmying up the evolutionary scale.
