Ain't THAT the cat's pajamas Human-Cat Relationship Goes Back Further

While ancient Egypt provides the first written record of cats, a burial discovered on Cyprus indicates that humans and felines may have become associated much earlier — extending 9,500 years or more into the past.

It's a relationship that has ranged from their being adored as gods in the Nile valley to their slinking into medieval witchhood and rising again to be revered in poet T.S. Eliot's verses and in the stage show "Cats." Today, more than 30 percent of American homes host a cat.

Jean-Denis Vigne of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris believes the relationship first blossomed with the development of agricultural societies 10,000 or so years ago.

"It seems that cats probably came more and more frequently into villages where grain stocks attracted numerous mice," said Vigne. "I think that human beings rapidly understood that they could use cats for reducing the number of mice."