cat

English cat comes from Old English catt (male) and catte (female), from Proto-West Germanic *kattu, from Proto-Germanic *kattuz — widely thought to trace back to Late Latin cattus and Latin catta, possibly ultimately from an Afroasiatic language.

Genetic evidence suggests domestic cats spread out of the Near East and became especially popular in Egypt around 4000 years ago, reaching Greece and Italy some 2500 years ago — a spread that a word moving from Afroasiatic into European languages would roughly match, though no single proposed source word has held up without problems.

The word is a doublet of Spanish and Portuguese gato, both descending from the same Latin root; it's also cognate with French chat, German Katze, Welsh cath, and Russian кот, among many others across Europe and beyond.