First domesticated cat

The oldest archaeological evidence of the domestication of the cat dates back 9,500 years. The bones of a cat were discovered in the neolithic village of Shillourokambos on Cyprus. The position of the cat in the ground was next to the bones of a human, whose similar state of preservation strongly suggests they were buried together.

The discovery was made by French scientists, led by Professor Jean Guilaine of the CNRS Centre d'Anthropologie in Toulouse, France, and announced in the journal Science in April 2004.

It’s worth noting that a study dated 7 January 2014, which appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), identified definitive evidence of domesticated cats living c. 5,300 years ago, in the village of Quanhucun in Shaanxi, China. Cats would have been useful to the farmers here, by preying on the local rodent population (the remains of a rodent burrow were uncovered at the site, near what had been a storage pit). Archaeological evidence suggests that these felines were smaller than wildcats but more in keeping with the size of domestic cats. (See: https://theconversation.com/earliest-evidence-of-cat-domestication-found-in-china-21552, and also: https://www.pnas.org/content/111/1/116.)