When did wild cats become our pet friends?

They're known for being fluffy, purry and sometimes pretty feisty.

Nearly one in four households own a cat in the UK but our feline friends weren't always pets in our homes.

And scientists now reckon cats became domesticated more recently than previously thought.

One of the researchers of the study, Professory Greger Larson from the University of Oxford, said: "That relationship we have with cats now only gets started about 3.5 or 4,000 years ago, rather than 10,000 years ago."

All modern cats are descended from the African wildcat but how and when they became pampered pets has been a question scientists have been trying to answer for years.

Researchers looked at bones from archaeological sites across Europe, North African and Anatolia and analysed their DNA.

It was previously thought that cats became domesticated when humans began agriculture in the Levant - a subregion of West Africa along the eastern Mediterranean - around 10 thousand years ago.

They compared the age of the bones and the DNA with the DNA of modern cats and found cat domestication probably didn't start until a few thousand years ago in northern Africa.

Professor Larson added, "it looks like it is much more of an Egyptian phenomenon," which makes sense when you think about the history of the Egyptians.

Ancient Egyptians believed cats were very special and often mummified them to take into the afterlife.

Once humans and cats had formed this special bond, they were moved around the world on ships as pest controllers.

They reached Europe about 2,000 years ago - which is again, much later than previously thought and eventually travelled into the UK with the Romans.

Cats are now found in every part of the world except Antarctica.