World Journal (New York) - World Journal (New York) - Weekly Supplement
家貓的由來
●While 12,000 years ago might seem a bold estimate—nearly 3,000 before the date of the Cyprus tomb’s cat─
1萬2000年前，這也許是個大膽的估值，接近賽普勒斯貓塚出現的3000年前─
●it actually is a perfectly logical one, since that is precisely when the first agricultural societies began to flourish in the Middle East’s Fertile Crescent.這其實非常符合邏輯性，因為這正是第一個農業社會開始在中東「新月沃土」 （Fertile Crescent）地區興盛的時候。
●When humans were predominantly hunters, dogs were of great use, and thus were domesticated long before cats.當人類主要都還是獵人時，狗非常有利用價值，也因此狗被訓化的
時間比貓來得更早。
●Cats, on the other hand, only became useful to people when we began to settle down, till the earth and— crucially—store surplus crops.貓，另一方面，對人類變得有利用價值是當我們開始定居下來時，直到農地和關鍵的「儲存剩餘作物」的技術產生。
●With grain stores came mice, and when the first wild cats wandered into town, the stage was set for what the Science study authors call “one of the more successful ‘biological experiments’ ever undertaken.”儲存食物會招來老鼠，當第一隻野貓徘徊到人們居住的鎮上時，該階段被科學研究學者稱為「執行過的眾多生物實驗中，比較成功的一項」。
●The cats were delighted by the abundance of prey in the storehouses; people were delighted by the pest control.糧倉裡大量的獵物讓貓感到興奮，人們也因為害蟲的防治而感到愉悅。
●”We think what happened is that the cats sort of domesticated themselves,” Carlos Driscoll, one of the study authors, told the Washington Post.「我們認為事情的由來是，貓自然而然的讓自己被馴化」，其中一名研究學者椎斯寇(Carlos Driscoll)這麼告訴「華盛頓郵報」。
●The cats invited themselves in, and over time, as people favored cats with more docile traits, certain cats adapted to this new environment, producing the dozens of breeds of house cats known today.貓不請自來地進到家中，長時間下來，隨著人類偏好擁有服從特質的貓，某些貓便適應了新的環境，孕育更多的品種，也就是現在我們所謂的「家貓」。
●In the United States, cats are the most popular house pet, with 90 million domesticated cats slinking around 34 percent of U.S. homes.在美國，貓咪是最受歡迎的家庭寵物，全國約有9000萬隻家貓，占了約34%的美國家庭。
●Nowadays, of course, cats are superstars: the protagonists of comic strips and television shows.到現代，想當然爾，貓成了當紅炸子雞：更是連載漫畫和電視節目的主角。
●By the mid-90s, cat services and products had become a billion-dollar industry.
截至1990年代中期，與貓相關的服務和商品已經成為一項數十億元的產業。