What animal did the common housecat evolve from?

I guess vetenarians who believe in Intelligent Design cannot answer this question. They must be sad that each time a species gets killed off by mankind it will never get replaced because, hey, evolution does not exist. So the number of species can only decrease over time, until there are not enough to maintain a balance of nature and our entire ecosystem crashes.For everyone else, I am particularly interested in just what species cats may be descended from.

tigers"inside every cat there is a tiger"

Probably the European wild cat: Felis silvestris"This small cat is found throughout most of Europe. Remains of wild cats dating back over 2 million years have been found in Britain. The European wild cat is similar in appearance to the domestic tabby cat being greyish-brown and brown with some darker markings. The wild cat is more heavily built than the domestic cat weighing about 10-15 lb. and being about 2 ft. long (body and head).Some taxonomists classify a similar cat found in Africa as an African wild cat (a separate species from the European) others claim that the African cat is simply a subspecies of the European wild cat."

THAT IS A VERY INTRESING QUESTION.

CANISLUPUS said "The European wildcat is the domesticated>>>>>> cats closest living relative, they can hybridize.Canislupus for someone who lists himself as a zoologist in their profile you make a lot of statementd like this that are just plain wrong.The closest living relative of the housecat is the housecat, Felis sylvestris subsp. lybica. It's also called the the African wild cat and the Arabian Cat. The European wildcat or cat-o-the-woods, F. sylvestris subsp. sylvestris is the same species and so of course can interbreed. It has widely hybridised with domsestic cats, and as a result most cat-o-the-woods contain some lybica genetic material and most EUROPEAN domestic cats contain sylvestris material. But in no way is it true to say that even European housecats are most closely related to the sylvestris subspecies. And of course outside Europe and European colonies most housecats contain no sylvestris genetics and are instead hybrids with the local F. sylvestis >>>>>They probably originated from a close relative of the>>>>>european wildcat in the middle east where domestication>>>>>occured.There are no European wildcats in the Middle East. European wildcats, as the name should tell you, are inhabitants of Europe. The Mddle East is in Asia. The wildacts of the Middle east are all of the lybica subspecies.>>>>The fact that this wild relative no longer exists....Where the heck did you get the idea that the Arabian wildcat no longer exists? F. lybica lybica is listed as abundant and found theourghot North Africa and the Middle East.>>>>can be accounted for by constant breeding with>>>>domesticated cats to the point where they are just>>>>>considered feral cats.Gee, and I spent several days wandering through the scrub tracking these things, taking blood samples and putting radio collars on them to analyse the possible effects of hybridisation. Now you tell me they are ALL hybrids. I feel such a fool.Good grief canislupus. I think you managed to be wrong on every single point you posted. The ancestor of the domestic cat has not been hybridised out of existence. It still exists. It is still quite common. It is genetically distinct. It is not the European wildcat.