<P> In rural areas, cat doors (often simple holes) in the walls, doors or even roofs of grain and flour storage spaces have long been used to welcome feral cats to hunt rodent pests that feed on these stores . Human semi-domestication of wildcats dates back to at least 7,500 BC in Cyprus, and the domestic cat was a part of everyday life in grain - dependent ancient Egypt (ca . 6,000 BC onward). Nowadays, this function is mostly lost, but in some rural areas, such as Valencia, Spain, and Vaunage, France, farm cat doors and holes (Spanish: gateras, French: chatières) are still common . </P> <P> The 14th - century English writer Geoffrey Chaucer described a simple cat hole in the "Miller's Tale" from his Canterbury Tales (late 14th century). In the narrative, a servant whose knocks go unanswered uses the cat door to peek in: </P> <P> An hole he foond, ful lowe upon a bord Ther as the cat was wont in for to crepe, And at the hole he looked in ful depe, And at the last he hadde of hym a sighte . </P> <P> In an apparent early modern example of urban legend, the invention of the pet door was attributed to Isaac Newton (1642--1727) in a story (authored anonymously and published in a column of anecdotes in 1893) to the effect that Newton foolishly made a large hole for his adult cat and a small one for her kittens, not realizing the kittens would follow the mother through the large one . Two Newton biographers cite passages saying that Newton kept "neither cat nor dog in his chamber". Yet over 60 years earlier, a member of Newton's alma mater Trinity college, one J.M.F. Wright, reported this same story (from an unknown source) in his 1827 memoir, adding: "Whether this account be true or false, indisputably true is it that there are in the door to this day two plugged holes of the proper dimensions for the respective egresses of cat and kitten ." </P>

Who is credited with inventing the cat flap