In the history of China, the record of keeping cats has a long history. Cats have the nature of catching mice, so in the early days of human society, cats can reduce the harm of mice and benefit agricultural production. At this time, cats are regarded as one of the "Ba Shen". Later, in the agricultural society, people began to domesticate cats intentionally. Generally speaking, people in this period kept cats mainly because it had the characteristics of catching mice. Early records were mostly "raccoons", and modern scholars believe that raccoons and cats are a kind of creature.
The record of catching mice by raccoons appeared in the Warring States period. By the Han dynasty, there were more records about raccoons, but the function of catching mice was still the main one in this period. Liu Xiang of the Western Han Dynasty also talked about catching mice with raccoons in Shuo Yuan, which means that raccoons can be bought in the market for only 100 yuan, and raccoons have good ability to catch mice. It can be seen that many people had raised raccoons to catch mice at that time.
Cats have always been used as human production tools. It was not until the Tang and Song Dynasties that people domesticated cats, and their function of catching mice gradually faded, and cats gradually became "pets" accompanying people. It should be noted that in the Tang and Song Dynasties, the names of cats and raccoons coexisted. At that time, cats were also called "raccoon slaves", which was a nickname for cats, indicating that cats could be considerate and driven by people. It can be seen that cats are domestic raccoons.
Cats enter people's daily lives as pets, and more and more cats appear in poems, paintings and calligraphy, and even some people specialize in cats. It can be seen that the partnership between cats and people has a long history. Modern "cat slave" refers to people who like cats, similar to the ancient "dog slave".