Cat Programs and rehome neutered feral cats to people who are looking for barn cats. Ship's cat Domestic cats have been members of ship crews since the beginning of commercial navigation. Phoenician and Etruscan traders probably carried cats on board their trading vessels to Italy and the Mediterranean islands. History Cats in ancient Egypt were venerated for killing rodents and venomous snakes. The need to keep rodents from consuming or contaminating grain crops stored for later human consumption may be the original reason that cats were domesticated. The spread of cats throughout much of the world is thought to have originated in Egypt. Scientists do not agree on whether cats were domesticated in Ancient Egypt or introduced there after domestication. Phoenician traders brought them to Europe for control of rat populations, and monks brought them further into Asia. Roman armies also contributed spreading cats and eventually brought them to Britain. Since then, cats continued to be introduced to new countries, often by sailors or settlers. Cats are thought to have been introduced to Australia in either the 1600s by Dutch shipwrecks, or the late 1700s by English settlers. These domesticated cats began to form feral populations after their offspring began living away from human contact. In the 19th and 20th centuries, several cat specimens were described as wildcat subspecies that are considered feral cat populations today: Felis lybica var sarda proposed by Fernand Lataste in 1885 was a skin and a skull of a male cat from Sarrabus in Sardinia that looked like an African wildcat (Felis lybica), but was more reddish, gray and brown and had longer hair on the back. In the 1980s, Colin Groves assessed values of Schauenberg's index of cat skulls of zoological specimens that originated in the Mediterranean islands. Based on these values, he concluded that Sardinian wildcats are descendants of African wildcats that were introduced from North Africa's Maghreb region. Results of zooarchaeological research indicate that Sardinian wild cats descended from domestic cats that were introduced around the beginning of the first millennium during the Roman Empire, and probably originated in the Near East. Felis reyi proposed by Louis Lavauden in 1929 was a skin and a skull of a specimen from Biguglia in Corsica that was smaller and darker than the European wildcat (Felis silvestris), had a much shorter tail than the African wildcat and differed in fur colour and markings from both.