Okay you mathematics smart arses...

[logansrogue]

I need some help here. This is a complicated problem.

In the time of Alexander the Great, there were no cats in Greece. If there were, they were VERY rare. They were often taken on board ships to keep the population of rats down. Lord knows how they stayed there with their hatred of water! That aside, Alexander the Great decided to bring the newly domesticated cat he saw in Egypt back with him to Greece. He probably made sure that there were regular shipments of them into Greece for the ruling class to enjoy.

So this is in the year 323 BC. What I want to know is what the cat population of Greece would be in the year 51 BC.

The following parameters would make it easier:

- The number of cats being shipped into Greece in the first instance? Let's say it's fifty.
- Fifty more are brought each year.
- The average litter of each queen is four. Half of the cats brought in are female.
- Each cat lives for five years.
- Each queen continues to have litters every six months.
- Half of each litter is male and the other half female.

I don't know how particularly accurate this would be, but it would most certainly give a nice rough number.

Why do I want to know this magic number, you may ask? Don't ask. Just don't. Oh, okay, I may as well say since people might actually be bothered solving this little problem which I have NO idea how to solve.

I'm writing a Xena story, and I need to know if, when she was around (roughly 50 BC) cats were common enough in Greece for poor families to have, or whether they were still exotic animals limited to the cities (Athens, Corinth, Thebes, etc). If they weren't, then it's plausible that Gabrielle may never have seen a cat before. (Xena would have since she's travelled, and Joxer most definitely since he lived in Athens growing up. His mother might have even have had one, being a warlord's wife and the reciever of many fine gifts). If they were, then she most likely had one on her farm. So it's kinda important to the way the story goes whether they're common or not.

I know, I go to ridiculous lengths for fic. You should see all the research I do for some of these things. Like the Hamunaptra series? I study music of the time, history in the region, the actual events of the time which the movie is roughly based on, and when writing in new mythology, I gather it from details of real events in Ancient Egypt. With my Albanach fic? Which is an Elseworlds Logan/Marie fic taking place at the time of the 1296-14 invasion of Scotland? Not only did I read fat honking Nigel Tranter fics, but downloaded htmls and studied history books, picking out exact battles and areas, knowing where everything happened, so I could accurately plot Logan and Marie's adventures through Scotland. With my Xena fic, Little Old Lady from Pasadena, which involves racing chariots, I researched real chariots of the time and learnt about the way they were built so I could have Gabrielle and Joxer accurately talk about the parts of the chariots and how to make them go faster. With my X-Men fic? I studied up on the race for mapping the human genome, and where humans were with cloning and so forth. The list goes on and on.

When it comes to writing, I am so God-damned obsessive-compulsive!! LOL!

Comments

[tiberius-n.livejournal.com]

I have nothing constructive to say other than MST 3000 mood icon Yay

[fair-terentia.livejournal.com]

Okay, I don't know anything about cats in Greece (or Xena really), but I've never heard of them being kept as domestic animals in Rome. By 50 BC Athens would be part of Rome's growing empire so you probably need to look at domestic animals in Rome. At around that period Catullus' girlfriend had a pet sparrow. There were hunting dogs, birds- large and small, crickets I think but I haven't heard of cats, either domesticated or wild. I don't believe they ate them either so I'd assume they were pretty rare. And if they were rare in Rome they'd be even rarer in Athens, since the empire had considerably dimished by then. Whether there were wild cats though, I do not know.

I hope this was in some way helpful!

[starfyre01.livejournal.com]

Dogs, mice and turtles were very common pets in ancient Greece. Cats, however, weren't, so it's highly unlikely that Gabby ever saw a domesticated cat until she traveled to Egypt.

Okie dokie: taking this down to a single year timeline (since that's probably the best):

You've got 25 males & 25 females. Assuming that all pairs 'mate' successfully twice a year, 25 (queens) x 8 (total number of kittens for successful matings 2x) = 200 kittens in total, but then it gets complicated because I don't know when cats mate for the first time agewise...

[dafwarg.livejournal.com]

okay - I think your algorithm has a few flaws...

Not including cats being brought in after the initial import:

I assumed that cats can breed after 6 months, with a 6 month gestation (wrong, but computationally easier). Assuming that every cat brought over originally was 6 months old, then 6 months in all 25 female cats give birth to 4 kittens, 2 male, 2 female). That gives you 150 cats after 6 months. 6 months later, the original 25 give birth again to another 100 cats, 50 of them female, 50 of them male, giving you 250 cats in all. Another 6 months and the first lot of offspring breed as well, giving you 650 cats in total. This continues.

After 4.5 years, your original cats die off, but you still have 127200 cats in total. This number increases exponentially, so after 8 years, you have 60453650 cats... yes, that's 60 million cats. This is where I stopped, given that I don't think you want a figure that unrealistic.

And remember, this didn't include bringing in extra cats each year.

[windtear.livejournal.com]

First off, general cats don't hate water. There are several breeds that are known to go fishing and/or hunt waterfowl, and individual cats from every breed that can be quite cheerful about the prospect of a hot bath. What the cat hates is being in an environment they aren't familiar with, which is not an incomprehensible attitude, I think.

The ships' cats I've met were, to a kitten, born on a boat, or in a shipyard. They grew up on boats, either on the sea or in dock, and when on land, rarely venture further inland than the shipyard or the inland side of the dock. They're not familiar with land, they don't like it, and they much prefer planks (or these days, fibreglass) beneath their paws, thanks.

I don't doubt that some kittens that were born to the cats that came on the boats stayed in Greece. But I would expect that the vast majority of kittens (that survived - ships' cats worked and there was no extra food for a furry soul) were traded between ships' crews (to older ships to replace cats that had died, or to new crews that didn't have a ship's cat yet) and stayed at sea.

So I think your equation is flawed from the beginning, because the kittens just wouldn't leave the ships.