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| Weasels into cats |
The ferret is a domesticated form of the weasel, traditionally used for killing rodents in the home, and is still kept as a house pet. They are not related to cats at all, and while ferrets have their fans, they have never been as widely adored as cats have. I mention ferrets here because both weasels and ferrets appear in the earliest collections of Aesop’s fables, while in later versions of those stories, the cat is often substituted for the weasel or the ferret.
In fact, in the very earliest Aesop collections, only one fable mentions a cat. Why the change? Most likely it was due to the spread of cats over Europe. The editors of the fables chose to substitute an animal that was increasingly well known to people, though not as well known in Aesop’s time. As the centuries went by, a person was more likely to have a cat than a ferret in his home.
