HISTORY OF THE ABYSSINIAN CAT

The ancient Egyptians had every good reason to worship cats. They were the special animal of the Goddess Bast who was believed to have appeared as a cat on earth. Cats protected the nation's food supply by hunting rats and mice in the great granaries of Egypt. When a cat died, its body was carefully embalmed, bound in long lengths of linen and placed in a richly decorated mummy case of wood, clay or bronze. It was buried in a cat cemetery or entombed in one of the consecrated areas near the Temple of Bast

An interesting collection of these mummies is on display today in the British Museum. All that remains in Egypt today of the colossal, richly decorated Temple dedicated to the Goddess, and the many cat cemeteries, are mounds. Although the remains of the cats have lain undisturbed for centuries, archaeologists were too late to prevent the desecration of one of the largest of these cat cemeteries near Cairo. Mummies were sold as curios in shops in Cairo for the tourist trade, and many were destroyed by vandals.
Of the remainder, many tons of embalmed cats bodies were sold in ton lots and shipped to England for use as agricultural fertilizer.

The earliest possible entry of live cats from Egypt to Britain appears to be in 1868 with British soldiers returning from the Sudanese War. It is quite possible that several kittens were domesticated by the troops and brought home with them. There are also reports of two cats being taken into England by the wife of an army officer about that time. These imports must have been bred with cats in England to produce the breed now known as the Abyssinian.
The Abyssinian was first registered as an official breed in 1882, and every Abyssinian cat in the world is descended from the stock that existed at this time. They were first imported to Australia in 1958.

Today's Abyssinian Cat

The Abyssinian cat we know today closely resembles bronzes and paintings of these ancient Egyptian cats, and there seems little doubt that it is descended from them. Zoologists consider these cats to be the oldest breed in the cat family (Felis Domestica). These robust affectionate, yet firecely independent cats have remarkable charm, they are extremely agile, very active and the appearance of being always on tiptoe for adventure. Their melodius, bell-like voices are rarely heard; they seem to carry within them the spirit of eternal kittenhood.

Source: The Devaraja Abyssinian