http://bokane.tumblr.com/post/46306113962/laphamsquarterly-since-i-got-my-cat-five-white

But archaeologists and other scientists are human, and that means that they are imperfect, and prone to see what they want to see. And sometimes, they lie.

I have an uncle who lived on Kyushu for 32 years, he taught at a university there, and some archaeologists at the school partnered with some more well-known people digging up one of the burial mounds of an old king there on the island.

After more than a year at the site, they closed it up.
Not due to lack of funding.
They gave no reason.
Just closed the dig and left.
And never published anything.

Later, my uncle became convinced the real reason was that they had found evidence that the king was Korean.

Humans are human.

Stories with tigers, dogs, pigs, horses, cows, sheep, camels, goats, rats, and hundreds more. Lots of stories with monkeys.

Stories with domestic house cats…. none from ancient China. I haven’t read them all, but I’ve read a bunch.

If you find a story written before 1200 AD, set in China, written by a Chinese, that includes a domesticated house cat, please do let me know.

If you go by the written record, it seems dragons are real, and house cats are mythical.

It seems much more likely that cats were carried into China by Silk Road traders than the idea that they were domesticated in China, and nobody mentioned them in stories.

They would surely have been one of the 12 Year Animals if they were common.