Until recently the cat was commonly believed to have been domesticated in ancient Egypt, where it was a cult animal, but a grave excavated in Cyprus that contained the skeletons, laid close to one another, of both a human and a cat estimated to be 9,500 years old, pushed back the earliest known feline-human association significantly. Men and cats living together probably occurred with the beginning of agriculture: food storage attracted mice and rats, which attracted cats, their natural predator.
From Wikepedia.