Catmageddon
Catmageddon
Intro.
A key to understanding.
A Dog meets a human and thinks:“This human has given me a home, feeds me, and takes care of me, he must be God”.
A Cat meets a human and thinks: “This human has given me a home, feeds me, and takes care of me, I must be God”.
And if there’s nothing Wild?
You are a Wildlife photographer, you find yourself for a few days in the beautiful city of Tbilisi, Georgia, but soon realize that there’s no wildlife to photograph there. So what do you do?
Tbilisi is a wonderful city, nestled in the heart of the Caucasus, Georgia a land with a great history, culture, art, inclusiveness, a territory rich in nature with an atmosphere that makes you feel at home even if you are a foreigner. A kind, welcoming People, proud of their Land and Country, an extraordinary cuisine with iconic dishes that are, since I discovered them many years ago, among my absolute favorites. Georgia remains a less known pearl in this world made of imitative tourism, where the majority of people go to a place just because others go to that place, unable to look beyond the clichés. Georgia and Tbilisi are not like that, fortunately they are not, and I hope they will never become, a destination for mass tourism.
But we are not here to talk about this, but to talk about of another beautiful characteristic of the Georgian capital, the presence of a notable quantity of stray dogs and stray cats. But not strays as you think in a negative way, but on the contrary, positive. Dogs all with chips in their ears, helped and cared for by the population even if they are strays. Cats everywhere, lots of cats, even without reaching the unattainable levels of “Catification” of Istanbul, but enough to be able to say that Tbilisi is defintely a “Cat City”.
Invent it. Catmageddon.
That’s right, even if you find yourself in a place where you have a lot to see and photograph, it doesn’t mean that you can’t still find something “wild”. This is how “Catmageddon” was born, a tribute to Tbilisi and its numerous and beautiful Felines.
But let’s take a step back. Way back. The story of how Cats became what they are, perhaps many of you already know it, but for those who don’t know it yet, let’s start with some shocking news: Cats were not born on the sofa, inside an apartment, but in the wildest heart of the planet, millions of years ago. Wild, like all animals. I know it might make you smile, but even Cows, Chickens and Goldfish were not suddenly popped-up in a farm or in a Pet Shop, they were transformed into what they are by Evolution and by Man, who transformed them for necessity, utility or pleasure, into what your eyes can now see.
Belonging to the Order Carnivora, family Felidae; a family that appeared more or less between 12 and 15 million years ago (and which in turn includes the eight main evolutionary lines in which all Felines are classified), the domestic Cat as we know it today is the evolution of a Wild African feline (Felis Silvestris Libyca), whose evolutionary process began about 6 million years ago.
But let’s get back in the time machine and go back to about 30 million years ago, when the first member of the “Felidae” family probably appeared on the planet during the Oligocene (the third and final geological epoch of the Paleogene). The first “Cats” had a long body and shorter legs than current felids, as well as a different set of teeth, more primitive and more suited to manage the problems of those times. Probably the closest to the shape of today’s cats is the “Pristifelis Attica”, a proto-cat who lived about 10 million years ago. From this ancestor, from an inhospitable steppe, from extreme climate and cataclysms, begins a story that ends directly on your Sofa.
Humans and Cats: when a relationship of convenience became Love.
But let’s leave Prehistory and move directly and without a DeLorean to when the Cats began to be useful for Men and Men began to be useful to Cats. Well yes, because, anyone who has a Cat knows, there is no subjection or blind obedience in these animals, but equality, respect and mutual collaboration (even if in many cases now you are the unaware, happy slaves of your cat, and not the other way around).
The first traces of contact and the beginning of the long process of domestication date back to about 10.000/12.000 years ago, in what we currently call the “Middle East”. With the development of hunting and agriculture, the birth and growth of the first human settlements, the first problems of coexistence with another invasive species, as much if not more invasive than us, began: mice. The ever-increasing number of rodents attracted an ever-increasing number of the ancestors of the modern Cat, the African Wild Cat, a small feline with a solitary nature, a striped coat and great hunting skills, which began to spontaneously frequent human settlements. These small predators found, thanks to our presence, numerous prey available without having to work too hard. Let’s say that it started like this, as a “home rodent control service”, which then moved to increasingly larger agglomerations, then to palaces, on ships, in royal courts and so on, thus spreading the increasing of cats everywhere.
Cats then underwent a phenomenon of urbanization and domestication, until becoming, in a relatively short time, real divinities. Ancient Egypt is, in ancient times, and before modern times, the best evidence of symbiosis “Cat-Man”, so close as to lead to identifying and depicting a Female Divinity, the Goddess Bastet, protector of music and fertility, with the appearance of a Cat.
Today, in 2025, Cats live with us, making us believe we are in control but, unlike all other animals that have undergone domestication (primarily dogs, which are instead totally dependent on man) their “wild” nature, their ability to adapt and their indomitable spirit of independence are the same that their ancestors had 10.000 years ago, when they first met man and looked him in the eyes thought “ok, but let it be clear that I’m in charge here”.
Happy Catmageddon to all.
(This collection of 30 images was taken in Tbilisi, Georgia, between January 3 and 4, 2025. Almost all the subjects are portrayed in two shots, apart from a few exceptions where the shot is single, and one triple portraits. The photos are in chronological order.)
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Dear Marco, someone needs to tell the harsh truth: this is fantastic, amazing, fascinating, beautiful and simply purrrrrrfect! These photos have stolen my heart. They are so charismatic, expressive and gorgeous. It was really interesting to read that “into the wild” intro dedicated to cats, but the photos are just a pearl of this story. I urgently need a catmageddon edition of “Docu” or something else like that (consider this an official statement of catmageddon affection). Applause to you, great job!
Dear Anna, thank you very much for your appreciation and all the compliments. I had fun finding and chasing cats, whom I personally thank for their precious (and not obvious) collaboration. Regarding the request for publication… I would like to do something, maybe create monographic publications for different animals, environment or different topics. Maybe something digital, I will think about it.