TheTorah offers a fine article about how Judaism considers the Libyan desert cat. It preyed upon small birds and rodents; both of these came to humans, so the cat followed them. (Another breed followed them in Asia; but we're talking the western Semites today.)
Egypt and old west Eurasia venerated the cat; they weren't wholly domestic, but did drive off the smaller rats - and pigeons, also arguably vermin. But then, some pre-Thai southwest Asians started cooping the junglefowl. Cats had the bad habit of hunting chickens too; and of course many islands to this day consider feral cats a menace. The Sasanians ruled that cats be vermin, no better than poisonous snakes.
Under Iranian rule in the Eraq, Rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar permitted to raise kufri-dogs [hedgehogs], cats, monkeys, and stone-martens because they are likely to rid the house of vermin
. The oriental stone-marten would stand in for domestic ferrets out West. Inasmuch as contemporary Hatrene Christians would hardly have a problem with kittycats, I think we're seeing a general urban Semitic resistance to more-rural Iranian rulings upon them.
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