When I announce that I’m not really a pet person (and especially that I don’t particularly want a dog), people stare at me like I’m a criminal. But at least I’m not as vicious as the world’s first cat owners. Recently, a study published in bioRxiv has called into question the timeline of cat ownership.Previously, scientists believed that cats became domesticated during the Neolithic period as African wildcats were drawn in by the cosy fires and abundance of food linked to farming, while humans welcomed their presence as they got rid of rodents.But not only does this new paper suggest that this timing is off (the authors put it at the “first millennium BC” in Egypt), but it suggests the relationship believed to have existed between the first cat/human pairs was gorier than we thought.Cats seem to have been bred for sacrifice firstThe scientists looked at ancient cat remains found in a variety of spots across Europe and North Africa, including a 9,500-year-old site in Cyprus. Though these had previously been believed to show domesticated cats, a combination of carbon dating, genetic testing, and bone research suggests they were actually wildcats.