mask from a cat mummy

Usually you get to see the whole kitty-mummy. A little kitty mask is rarer. Luckily for us, the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee has a lovely one, and wrote a short article examining the life and death of cats in Egypt.

Not that we haven't done that before. However, the article throws in a few things I hadn't seen well referenced before:

In addition to being sacred, Diodorus notes their useful characteristics, such
as confronting asps positioned to bite and warding off other snakes. Cats were
also of service to fowlers in their search for birds in the Nile marshes, as
attested by a wall painting in the New Kingdom tomb of Nebamun at Thebes.
Diodorus explains that a portion of land for sacred cats was consecrated, which
provided for their upkeep and made them self-supporting.

Beautiful cat face from 1st century AD here.