Friday, January 23, 2009

Cats as a pet

Cats share the spotlight with dogs in terms of house pet popularity and are considered to be sweet, loyal, useful and delightful pets that their owners truly delight in. Cats are small domesticated animals that have gained popularity for their intelligence and their ability to follow simple commands once trained, and their capacity to catch and destroy vermin, more specifically rats. You can find multiple cat varieties with contrasting color, fur type and of course size originating out of natural interbreeding or human intervened breeding.

The African Wild Cat is believed to be the closes pre-domesticated of cats and present day cats still carry innately wild characteristics like being carnivorous and instinctive in hunting, known to hunt over a thousand species for food. Association of human beings and cats is relatively older, documented reference comes in Egyptian, Chinese and Viking literature, these cultures often placed cats at a higher status over other domestic and wild animals.
Cat-Aloguing Cats
Cat are often called as Tom, while the female of the species is often called Queen, snow cats, pedigreed or purebred cats at times are referred as sirens for males and Dams for females. Purebred and pedigreed cats both have recorded ancestries; purebred, however, have a long-lineage of only one cat variety or breed, while pedigreed cats may have ancestors of different, mostly new breeds. Breeding different cat varieties are subject to strict rules of cat registries and associations that study, regulate and assess the compatibility of varieties to come up with better offspring, both in terms of health and appearance.
Domestic longhairs, shorthairs, random-bred and mongrels are some terms that refer to cats with mixed ancestry that vary from one country to the next. Most of the cat population the world over is comprised of random-bred felines, with purebreds only totaling to less than ten percent of the feline population. Domestic cats, in general, have been classified by Carolus Linnaeus as Felis catus back in the 17th century as the domestic sub-species of the wild cat family.
Cats commonly weigh anywhere between two to seven kilograms with some breeds such as the Maine Coon weighing over ten kilograms. As a result of overeating, some of the bigger cat varieties can weigh more than twenty kilograms but are considered by veterinarians as unhealthy and more susceptible to illnesses, ailments and diseases. Additionally, adult smaller cats that weigh less than two kilograms are also found but are not considered as part of miniature type, these are often considered underweight and unhealthy cats.

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