Mystery of Cat Domestication Solved

Vancouver, British Columbia, 2026-04-21—University of British Columbia researchers have finally solved a major mystery surrounding the domestication of cats. Scientists have known that cats were first domesticated about 9500 years ago, but until now, the trigger for this momentous event was pure speculation.

Dr. Hamish McTavish, a professor of biology at UBC, believes he now has the answer. "Previously, we all thought that cats developed a commensal relationship with humans around the time agriculture was developed," said McTavish. "The theory was that cats noticed rats and mice hanging around human habitats and so they hunted them. This benefited both humans and cats, so humans started keeping cats as pets."

McTavish now says this is pure bunk. "Cats started living with humans because around 9500 years ago, a significant human invention was created: The box. Cats of all types are genetically predisposed to insert themselves into a box, the smaller and tighter the better. Now, we don't know what accident of evolution produced this trait, but it was latent for millenia. When cats finally saw boxes, it was love at first sight."

McTavish speculates that early wild cats, upon stalking humans with the intention of killing and eating them, were bedazzled by the beautiful rectangular lines of early boxes and decided to move in instead. Another latent genetic trait of cats, a love for tuna fish, sealed the deal: Cats had never hitherto tasted tuna, so when the first cats were fed tuna fish while sitting in a box, it threw their genetic adaptation into overdrive, and within only a couple of hundred years the wild cats had evolved into the kittens and cats that lucratively grace today's Internet.

McTavish speculates that if the box had not been invented—if humanity had kept storing food and goods in urns and pots—then even today our cities might be menaced by hungry wild cats, craving something they cannot have and turning their anger on anything that gets in their way.