Which dynasty in ancient times began to keep cats, and how did cats become pets?

Cats can be said to be the animal that many people like, the cute pet cat can always achieve people's favorite. So when were cats raised by the ancients?

In Chinese history, there are records about keeping cats very early. Cats have a natural instinct to hunt rats, so in the early days of human society, cats could reduce the danger of rats and mice, which was beneficial to agricultural production, and at this time, cats were regarded as one of the "eight gods". Later on, as we entered the agricultural society, people began to intentionally domesticate cats. On the whole, people in this period kept cats mainly because of their rodent trapping properties. In the early records, the word "civet" appears, and modern scholars believe that the civet and the cat are one and the same creature.

Records of civets trapping mice appeared in the Warring States period. During the Han Dynasty, there were more records of the civet, but the focus was still on the function of trapping mice. Liu Xiang of the Western Han Dynasty also talked about trapping mice with civets in his "Saying Yuan," a passage that roughly means that civets can be purchased on the market for only a hundred dollars, and they have a very good ability to trap mice, so it can be seen that many people had already raised civets to trap mice at that time.

The cat has been used as a production tool for people until the Tang and Song dynasties, when people domesticated cats to gradually dilute its function of trapping mice, and cats gradually became "pets" to accompany people. It should be noted that in the Tang and Song dynasties, the cat and civet title is coexisting, then also called the cat "civet slaves", civet slaves is a kind of love for the cat, showing that the cat can be understood, for people to drive the meaning of. The cat is a domesticated civet.

The cat as a pet into people's daily lives, poetry and painting and calligraphy also more and more cat figure, and even people specializing in phase cat. It can be seen that the partnership between cats and people has a long history, and the modern "cat slaves" refers to people who like cats, with the ancient "civet slaves" have the same flavor.