 Traditionally , historians tended to think ancient Egypt was the site of cat domestication , owing to the clear depictions of house cats in Egyptian paintings about 3 @,@ 600 years old . However , in 2004 , a Neolithic grave excavated in <unk> , Cyprus , contained the skeletons , laid close to one another , of both a human and a cat . The grave is estimated to be 9 @,@ 500 years old , pushing back the earliest known feline – human association significantly . The cat specimen is large and closely resembles the African wildcat , rather than present @-@ day domestic cats . This discovery , combined with genetic studies , suggests cats were probably domesticated in the Middle East , in the Fertile Crescent around the time of the development of agriculture and then they were brought to Cyprus and Egypt . 
