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

[windtear.livejournal.com]

Hmm. That's different. Because in that case I wouldn't expect a constant influx. Most modern pet breed lines are traced back to a small group of imported animals that have in recent years been carefully bred out to avoid (more) incest and add desired attributes (cf: the history of non-traditionally-coloured Siamese cats). I'd expect a small pool to start off with and then near-constant inbreeding.

I'm referencing the case of Siamese cats in Britain, and I think that's a good place to start looking, because here we have a small population in an isolated area that could not pull in new blood, that was actively encouraged to expand. Halfbreed cats were common but never permitted to enter the breeding pools. The problems were noted and breeders did try to minimise them, so we have a record of the problems incest produces and the strategies practiced to prevent them. I think it's worth looking at.

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

Yes but why wouldn't they bring more in if there was a demand? Other than the fact that the Egyptians guarded the cats zealously at one point, once Greece and Rome took over the place, they could do what they want with the cats. At that point there was a lot of interbreeding between 'domestic' cats and the wild species that lived throughout Europe. This would have caused some biodiversity.

I'm still trying to figure this all out, so half the things I'm saying are me thinking out loud.