Some things never change. If you have a birdbath in your yard, you’ve no doubt seen your cat hungrily eye the birds in it and probably try to climb it. (A good birdbath is unclimbable, of course.) Archaeologists have dug up a similar scene from Pompeii, the Italian city famously destroyed by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius. A mosaic from the ruins of Pompeii, dating from about the year A.D. 79, shows a spotted cat eyeing three long-tailed birds in a bird-bath.
