The #history of International Hug Your Cat Day is rich in the reverence of #cats by #ancient #Egyptians and #Greeks. The Egyptian goddess Bastet is often depicted as a cat, sometimes in a fighting stance. Herodotus, a Greek historian, believed that killing a cat was forbidden, and when a household cat died, the entire household mourned its death. In Greek f#amilies, the dead cat was taken to the sacred city of #Bubastis, where it was embalmed and buried. This tradition is shared by the ancient Greeks and Romans, who kept weasels as pets for killing rodents. The earliest evidence of Greek domestic cats can be found in two coins from Magna Graecia dating from the middle of the fifth century B.C., depicting Iokastis and #Phalanthus playing with their pet cats.
