The reasons are probably a combination of the extreme environment (-40F in the winter)and an old belief that cats are harbingers of misfortune and death.

I have “city-bred” young, college-educated Mongol friends who grew up hearing negative things about cats, viscerally dislike them and don’t want to touch them, even though intellectually they know there’s nothing wrong with them.

On the other hand, I was traveling in the Gobi in 2006 and during a stop at a herders’ ger (what we call a yurt) I saw a pretty, healthy tabby cat. While I watched in amazement, the woman shooed the cat INTO the ger. Figures, doesn’t it.

Sorry, I meant breeds. Thanks for the clarification.

Sheep and chickens, though, have been found to be derived from more than one wild ancestor. Domestic chickens are mostly red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) but are also part gray jungle fowl (Gallus sonneratii). Domestic sheep may be derived from European mouflon (Ovis musimon) and the Asiatic mouflon (Ovis orientalis).

It would be interesting if other species besides the African wildcat were in the domestic cat’s ancestry. There are several different subspecies of wildcat (Felis silvestris), besides the oft-cited African subspecies (which also lives in the Middle East, where the domestication of the cat happened 10,000 years ago).