How Cats Moved In: teacher key

Cats, grade 9 edition, written for 9th grade. A cat's purr is still partly a mystery, and so is the story of how wildcats became house cats. Follow the DNA, the old bones and the trade routes.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What did the 2017 DNA study cover?
   • About 230 ancient and modern cats across about 9,000 years (answer)
   • Only living cats
   • Only cats from China
2. Why did scientists use DNA instead of bones to tell which wildcat was tamed?
   • Bones are too small
   • Skeletons of the five wildcat subspecies look the same as a house cat's (answer)
   • DNA is cheaper
3. What do the patterns of where and when cats appear suggest?
   • Cats spread along human sea and land trade routes (answer)
   • Cats flew over mountains
   • Cats lived only in Egypt
4. How did house cats mostly come to live with people?
   • People bred them for traits for thousands of years
   • Mostly through natural selection, as friendlier cats did better near people (answer)
   • They were taught in schools
5. What does domesticated mean here?
   • Tamed over generations (answer)
   • Lost
   • Very big

Words

• purr: soft cat hum
• vocal: of the voice
• subspecies: wildcat kinds
• archaeological: about old remains
• domesticated: tamed over generations