The following is my translation of an article called: Die erste vorgeschichtliche Spur der Hauskatze* von Dr Ludwig Hopf. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1910, Heft 9, Seiten 343-344. I'm not aware of any previous translation.
Trevor Dykes.

The first prehistoric trace of the domestic cat* by Dr Ludwig Hopf
* Neolithic culture (domestication) is discussed in the results of the research expedition to Central Asia, under the leadership of the leadership of the American Professor Raphael Pumpelly (Carnegie Institution Publication No. 73), with some surprising conclusions. However, the cat is not mentioned.

Sometimes, one overlooks an important point at the first reading of a book. Recently, when re-reading a study of the Neolithic, M Hörnes' Urgeschichte des Menschen ('Prehistory of Man'), I happened across an entry on page 260 which greatly surprised me, and it is well worth briefly addressing here. In the remarks on Neolithic cave habitations Hörnes also writes of the Bypustel cave (Moravia), and mentions the animals from which bones have been found in the cave and, as well as the dog, cattle, goat, pig, horse, fox and Arctic hare, these also include the domestic cat. Is it possible, I asked myself, that the domestic cat could have been a co-resident in a Stone Age cave, when the contents of all zoological works state they first reached Europe in historical times? That Neolithic people lived in this Moravian cave is shown by the remains of implements made from stone, horn and bone, and the pots that are crudely formed by the bare hand, as known only from the Stone Age.

Hörnes is a careful and knowledgeable archaeologist, and we can trust that he would not have reached his conclusions without very good evidence and also, in this case, they are supported by the verdict of an experienced zoologist, who investigated the bones that were discovered. If the skull found had been from a wild cat, then it would have been short and robust and easy to distinguish from the flat skull of a domestic cat. And the other skeletal evidence also provides solid evidence for this clear distinction. -If we now accept that Hörnes is correct, that the residents of the Bypustel cave actually already kept a tamed cat as a pet alongside their dog, then this raises a new question: How did they acquire this domestic cat? It cannot be assumed that they were able to tame and breed European wild cats, even should these have been kittens freshly fetched from the nest. All experience with such young wild cats shows they are absolutely untameable.

So all that remains, is to assume that the domestic cat in the Moravian cave is not descended from the European wild cat but rather, it came from elsewhere, and that inescapably leads to thoughts of the Egyptians, who already had domestic cats in the earliest times, and these were tamed descendents of the African wild cats from Nubia (Catus maniculatus). And now rises the question of a new difficulty: How are these Stone Age people from a Moravian cave supposed to have had connections with Egypt? When we assume that the residents of the Bypustel cave date from the close of the Neolithic, which is about 3,000 BC, then it would still be at least 1,500 years earlier than the Mycenaean age (about 1,500 BC), and it is known that the more southerly situated people on the east coast of Greece did have contacts with Egypt, although not a trace of a domestic cat has ever been found in Mycenae, Tiryns and so on. There is also not a single syllable said of domestic cats in the poetry of Homer (about 1,000 BC). The domestic cat first arrived in Greece from Egypt in the fourth century BC; even later, only in the closing times of the Roman Empire, did it come to Rome and the rest of Italy, and it first reached Northwest Europe towards the end of the 9th century AD.

If the possibility of the Bypustel cave dwellers having obtained their cat from the Egyptians is ruled out, then its original homeland must be looked for in the east and not in the south, which is, according to the general view of anthropologists, from whence the people of the Neolithic migrated to Europe with their domestic animals and seeds of domesticated plants. But if we follow the history of the domestic cat further east, it is already clear that no traces of cats are to be found on the monuments of the Assyrians, Persians or Medes. And the same applies for the Semites. There is no word of any cat in either the Old or New Testament; it is a later cultural import and is first mentioned as part of a household in a few parts of the Talmud. It is also noticeable that the cat arrived relatively late in India, and first appears in a script from about 2,000 years ago. The situation is similar for the Turkish and Mongolian peoples of Central Asia, and that cannot be its original home as the name used there is a Persian word.

And so we must look still further east to the ancient culture of the Chinese people. They have also possessed cats of various races since the earliest times. Because the Chinese generally call cats mao, and this word clearly corresponds to mao from Ancient Egypt, some have assumed that the Chinese adopted the cat from the Egyptians, but this has been without considering that the word mao could have arisen independently with both peoples, seeing as it is based on a natural sound and it is certainly plausible, given the recognised talent of the Chinese for raising animals, that they could have gained a tame mao over the course of time form an originally wild one. A highly likely source for this wild mao would be the living Manul cats (Catus manul) from the Tartar and Mongolian steppes, and especially when it is considered, as it is clearly stated in old Chinese scripts, that originally, only wild captured Manuls were tamed for the purpose of catching mice, and this was before they were further tamed into proper household pets.

Should the cat remains discovered in the Bypustel cave have most similarity with the skeleton of a Manul cat, then it would be thinkable that a group came from Central Asia with a tame Manul as a mouse catcher, and brought it happily to Moravia**. And that would also explain why other Moravian caves of the same age, or from still later during the Bronze Age, have yielded no remains of cats from the European area.

On the basis of skeleton parts of the Manul cat, Rüesch has already demonstrated its presence in Europe during Diluvian times, and it has been found together with other animals of the Asian steppes in the famous Schweizersbild (near Schaffhausen).

Translator's note
I've no idea whether the report may be considered valid, and assuming it could be would be unwise without further checking. The taxonomic terminology for cats is somewhat eccentric. The generic name Catus was proposed in 1775 whereas Felis, which is generally favoured today, was already in use in 1758.
I haven't been able to identify which Moravian cave might be meant by 'Bypustel', as the word doesn't appear to be current. I did, however, come across a reference to cat taming activities in Cyprus dating back about 9,500 years, and that would appear to render some of Hopf's tentative speculation irrelevant (but not uninteresting).
Science Daily
Oldest Known Evidence Of Cat Taming Found In Cyprus, 9.4.2004.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.