Although cats may be one of the most popular pets today, little is known about how and when humans and cats set up their close relationship. The earliest evidence for human-cat interaction dates back to prehistoric Cyprus , where the remains of a wild cat and a human -- dated 9,500 years old -- were found buried together. A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has confirmed the first direct evidence of a human-domestic cat relationship among Chinese farmers 5,300 years ago. Researchers studied the bones of cats, dogs, deer and other animals unearthed in an excavation   near a village in Central China. By using some ways, scientists showed that the cats were living on a mostly millet -based diet, just like the domesticated dogs and pigs from the site. "The most reasonable explanation for a high consumption of millet-based food is that the cats had formed a stable and mutual relationship with humans and could easily feed on rodents   around human villages, find leftover food or even have been fed by people intentionally," said Hu Yaowu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, whose research focuses on the relationship between humans and domesticated animals. "It is very interesting for us to find the consumption of millet-based foods by the cats, since this kind of evidence had long been missing." Hu explains. Since cats usually eat meat, such a diet would be unexpected, unless the cats were being fed by people, the study argues. The researchers also found that one of the cats survived to reach old age, implying that it had a safe place to live and enough to eat. Why the farmers wanted to keep cats nearby or make them "pets" could be answered by other evidence. Chinese archaeologists found some storage containers were specifically designed to keep out rodents -- a vermin   that cats could certainly have helped with. The simplified theory is that rats were attracted to the food of farmers, and so were harmful to farmers. Cats were attracted to the rats, and so farmers formed a mutually beneficial relationship with cats, taking care of them in return for pest control. Apart from cats, Hu Yaowu and his teams may also study  _  .
the preventions of pests from grains the history of Chinese farming the dogs and pigs the ways to keep pets