Get a Purr-fect Score on This History of Cats Quiz

Legend has it that the specter of a large black cat with a white spot on its chest roams the Scottish Highlands, stealing the souls of unburied corpses. To keep the Cat Sith away, night watchers called Feill Fadalach guarded a corpse until burial. The watchers drew Cat Sith away with catnip and games. Debate remains as to if the Cat Sith was a fairy creature or a witch in feline form.

In 2004, a woman named Julie paid $50,000 to clone her cat Nicky, who died at the age of 17. The cloning process was a success, and Julie named Nicky’s clone Little Nicky. According to Julie, Little Nicky was identical to his predecessor in both appearance and personality.

Whiskey distilleries house large amounts of grain to make the liquor, and it attracts a lot of mice. The famous Towser safeguarded the grain at the Glenturret Distillery in Scotland, earning him the nickname “Towser the Mouser” in the 1960s. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Towser killed an estimated 28,899 mice at the distillery. The distillery, which was founded in 1775, keeps a bronze statue on the premises to commemorate Towser.

A cat named Mayor Stubbs served as mayor of the small town of Talkeetna, Alaska, for almost 20 years. The townspeople had little interest in the 1997 mayoral candidates but fell in love with a ginger kitten with no tail who was plucked out of a box of unwanted kittens. They enacted a write-in campaign and elected Stubbs. His term ended in 2016 when Stubbs died at the old age of 20.

In the 1920s, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald began the informal tradition of having a Chief Mouser position — held by a cat — in the Cabinet Office of 10 Downing Street. The tradition has continued to this day with Larry, the first feline to officially hold the title. Former Prime Minister David Cameron adopted Larry in 2011, and the cat has remained at Downing Street even as prime ministers have come and gone.

According to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, if a cat died of natural causes in a house, all the members of the household would shave their eyebrows in mourning. In Egypt, cats were revered, often mummified after death, and buried in sacred repositories. It was absolutely forbidden to kill a cat in the Nile region's society, and feline images and idols are still found across Egypt's ruins.

The producers of the 1958 film “Bell, Book, and Candle” wanted a cat that had an Ava Gardner-type personality to play Pyewacket, the feline familiar to the star witch of the movie. They chose a Siamese cat who was eventually given its fictional counterpart’s name. The Humane Society awarded Pyewacket the 1958 Picture Animal Top Star of the Year, or PATSY, award.

The word “tabby” didn’t always refer to a type of cat; in fact, the name comes from a type of silk taffeta with an irregular wavy finish. The Al-‘Attābīya quarter of Baghdad was known as a production hub for this fabric, called “‘attābī.” In Latin, it was called “attabi,” and in French “tabis.” By the 1700s, the type of cat with a wavy coat resembling the original fabric was dubbed a “tabby.”

Ancient Norse writer Snorri Sturlusson described the goddess Freyja by writing, "When she travels, she drives two cats and sits in a chariot." Many Norse gods rode strange animals: Thor had a goat chariot, Odin rode an eight-legged horse, and Freyja's brother, Freyr, had a golden boar.

The first major modern cat show was held at London’s Crystal Palace in July 1871. Between 150 and 211 cats — mostly from aristocratic households — were put on display and judged for various classifications. Awards also went to the event’s “fattest cat” and “biggest cat.” The show was a huge success and attracted 200,000 guests — far exceeding expectations.

The Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum in Key West, Florida is home to approximately 60 polydactyl cats. Cats normally have five front toes and four back toes, but polydactyl cats have a few extra toes, which look like little thumbs on their paws. Hemingway had been a fan of polydactyl cats ever since a ship's captain gifted him one named Snow White.

For most of her life, Koko the gorilla had been part of an experiment where she was taught sign language and trained to communicate. For her 13th birthday in 1983, Koko signed that she wanted a cat. The gorilla named the cat "All Ball" and the pair were allowed to play together for an hour or so each day. Koko was fond of petting All Ball, who she would often call a "soft, good, cat" in sign language.

Early postmasters in the United Kingdom had an annoying problem: Mice were eating the mail. So, they began to bring in cats to help protect their postage from rodents. However, cats cost money to feed, so in 1868 the Secretary of the Post Office authorized the hiring of cats, allotting one shilling a week to pay for food.

In 1993, the defunct video game company Kaneko created a game for the Super Nintendo console based on the Clinton family’s cat, Socks. Titled “Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill,” the game followed Socks as he discovered a nuclear launch unit in a foreign embassy and raced to alert the President of a nuclear attack. Unfortunately, Nintendo canceled the game right before its release, believing it wouldn’t sell.

Daughter of Ra and the Distant Goddess, Bastet is the Egyptian deity of cats. Initially known as a protector, Bastet was depicted as a fierce woman with the head of a lioness, though over time her image morphed into the black domestic cat we recognize today. Also known as Bast, like most deities she represented several other realms of life, including domesticity, fertility, and childbirth.

In 1963, researchers at France's CERMA space agency recruited 14 cats into a rigorous training program. One of them, named Félicette, was chosen for a ride into space. The short, 15-minute trip was launched from a base in the Sahara Desert and only went about 100 miles above the Earth. Félicette landed safely, becoming the first — and, to date, only — cat in space.

A 2021 study did a genetic study of more than 1,000 specimens and found the origin of domestic cats can be traced to a single event in the Middle East. Descending from the Felis silvestris, ancient cat domestication coincided with the rise of early agriculture and civilization in the Fertile Crescent, around 12,000 years ago. Cats were chosen for domestic life due to their habit of killing mice, which helped to keep crops from being destroyed.

Commonly known in western culture as a "waving cat," a maneki-neko is actually beckoning people to approach it. The statues have been around for centuries, first appearing in a woodblock in 1852. Legend has it that a woman began selling figurines of her lost cat at a market, and they became quite popular locally. Today, a maneki-neko is said to bring good luck.

Ed Lowe was working at his family's sand, sawdust, and clay company when a new clay product was delivered. He set it aside until one day a friend asked him for an absorbent substance for pet waste. Lowe decided to try his discarded material, which turned out to be made of fuller's earth, an especially absorbent and odor-reducing material. He went on to found the brand Kitty Litter, which he sold for $200 million in 1990.

American poet T.S. Eliot was a lifelong cat lover, and in 1939, he published a book of poems all about cats, called “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” All of the songs in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical “Cats” —first performed in 1981 — are based on Eliot’s poems, and some song lyrics are taken from poems in their entirety.

In ancient Egypt, cats were revered as religious symbols, namely as the cat goddess, Bastet. But they were also cherished as family pets. Archaeologists have found mummified cats alongside their mummified owners. They believed that by burying the cat and owner together, they would remain together in the afterlife.

Tabby and Dixie were gifts from Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward, and Lincoln loved them. His wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, even once described cats as her husband's "hobby," and one official wrote that he watched Lincoln pet a cat for an hour straight. Lincoln also respected his cats' intelligence, saying, "Dixie is smarter than my whole cabinet! And furthermore, she doesn't talk back!"