Are domestic cats descended from big cats such as ocelots?

Were there small breeds of wild cat before humans started to keep them as pets. I know that there are wild cats in many mountainous regions around the world, which are a lot smaller than most of the big cats (Lions, Tigers etc.) but even they are considerably bigger than domestic breeds.


The ancient Egyptians kept cats which according to their art were the same size as the cats we know today, so when did people start keeping them and what sort of cat was first domesticated?

Are domestic cats descended from big cats such as ocelots?
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en%26amp;q=f...


The 4th website down mentions the African Wild Cat and the Asiatic Desert Cat as being the original ancestors of the modern cat. These are both small cats.
Reply:Sarah is right. Our domestic cat was descended from a small desert cat comparable in size to the ones we have today in our homes. All cats are in the family "felidae" and there are many species from very large ones to small ones. All cats are "cousins" in this sense. They are mostly all the top carnivores in their particular niche in the world and some of the larger ones also may prey on the smaller ones who live in the same area of the world.





In an evolutionary sense there have always been carnivorous species in any area, even when the animals are very tiny and not what we would think of as predators.
Reply:yes many were bred from larger cats such as ocelots, snow leopards, lynxes
Reply:Well in egypt they were used to protect the harvest stores from rodents and I'm just guessing here that, that is how they earned their keep for many years untill we started taking them into our homes and feeing them. Cats are clever and if it were me I would choose the comfy rug by the fire and food on tap aswell. As for decended, just from the small wild cats I'm assuming.
Reply:They are descended from African and Asian wild cats.





This has been prove through DNA tests.





They are not as is commonly believed descended from European wildcats-that is a close relative but not their direct ancestor.Like the European wildcat the African and Asian wildcat species look very like slightly bigger domestic cats.





They can interbreed with them easily though-my cat and her brother who is owned by my friend are the offspring of a female domestic cat and a Scottish wildcat tom-farm-cat in heat meets wildcat who hunts rabbits on farmland was how it happened in short.