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New DNA studies show that all cats, big and small, are closely related. The prehistoric saber-toothed tiger is an ancestor of the housecat of today. It only took 15 million years?a blink of an eye in geologic time?for cats to become excellent land predators. Cats were first domesticated in Egypt, where they were mummified and worshipped as gods for their mousing abilities. A recent archeological study in Cyprus proves that that humans gave kept cats as helpmeets for at least 9,500 years.

Cheetahs evolved in the opposite direction of man, who started out in Africa. Africa is the only place in the world where these large spotted cats exist today, but they may have started out in the Americas.
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Most dogs love chocolate, even though veterinarians say it isn’t good for them, but cats turn up their noses at sweets (as well as that expensive new cat food you bought). Scientists say cats don’t have a sweet tooth because they don’t have the genetic ability to taste sweets. Wild cats, such as lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars, have a similar inability to taste sweets. But as most of us know, the cats we adopt as pets get fat anyway.

“One possible explanation for this behavior is that felines are unable to detect sweet-tasting compounds like sugars and high intensity sweeteners because their sweet taste receptor is defective,” says geneticist Xia Li. “An obvious place to look?is at the genes coding for the sweet-taste receptor.”
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Kuzya was taken to Yakutsk. Didn’t care for it–too noisy,too dusty, to unlike his beloved village home of Olenyok. SoKuzya took off, much to the distress of the Efremovs, whohad come to love their little friend of two years.

Despite all their efforts, they couldn’t find Kuzya.Finally, they had to return home. Sadly, they left Yaktuskfor their little village. It was a long journey becauseSiberia is a big place. In fact, it was a journey of 1,335miles, most of it along narrow roads through the fastness ofthe great Siberian forest.

Home was not the same without Kuzya…until the day, threemonths later, that he showed up at the door.
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