THE ancestry of the world's household cats can be traced to just five lineages that lived alongside ancient settlers in the Fertile Crescent, an area stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Gulf.

The earliest archaeological evidence for cat domestication dates to 9500 years ago, when cats were thought to have been kept as pets in parts of Cyprus. But researchers believe it started 3000 years earlier, with the family feline having broken ranks with its wild relatives as long as 130,000 years ago.

Unlike pigs, cows and sheep, which were domesticated for agriculture, and horses and donkeys, which were exploited to pull farming equipment, cats began co-existing beside humans by feeding on mice, rats and other pests that infested the grain stores of the first farmers.