Persia's secret weapon: CATS #history

Ancient Egypt treated its cats like gods. The king of Persia noticed. Sources - The animal trick at Pelusium: Polyaenus, Stratagems 7.9 (2nd century AD), the only ancient source for it; Herodotus (3.11) describes a hard-fought battle there instead: http://www.attalus.org/translate/polyaenus7.html - Herodotus, Histories 2.65-2.67 (sacred animals, house fires, shaved eyebrows, Bubastis) and 3.1-3.16 (Cambyses in Egypt), tr. G. C. Macaulay: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2707 - Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.83 (killing a cat, even by accident; the "it was already dead" shouting): https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/1D*.html - Cambyses as pharaoh: the Udjahorresnet inscription (Vatican Museums): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udjahorresnet - The Persian cat (named after long-haired cats from Persia, 1620): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_cat; CFA, Most Popular Breeds for 2026: https://cfa.org/cat-talk/most-popular-breeds-for-2026/ Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/): "Desert City", "Tabuk", "Covert Affair". Sound effects: Kenney (kenney.nl) and Freesound contributors (CC0).