Cats were not widespread in the ancient world until very late. Herodotus writes about cats as an Egyptian novelty. People had mass food stores long before then.
"But recent genetic and archaeological discoveries indicate that cat domestication began in the Fertile Crescent, perhaps around 10,000 years ago, when agriculture was getting under way."
Edit in response to the comment below as i hit post-limit:
"Housecats seem to have been extremely rare among the ancient Greeks and Romans;[16] the Greek historian Herodotus expressed astonishment at the domestic cats in Egypt, because he had only ever seen wildcats.[16] Even during later times, weasels were far more commonly kept as pets[16] and weasels, not cats, were seen as the ideal rodent-killers"
Even if we assume this is correct and Herodotus and others were simply ignorant of this, it's obvious that the Greeks of his time, including those in Anatolia where he lived, where food had been stored in massive quantities for centuries if not millennia, did not have cats.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5790555/#:~:text=Ex...
"But recent genetic and archaeological discoveries indicate that cat domestication began in the Fertile Crescent, perhaps around 10,000 years ago, when agriculture was getting under way."
Edit in response to the comment below as i hit post-limit:
As it happens, we owe to weasels too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_cats#An...
"Housecats seem to have been extremely rare among the ancient Greeks and Romans;[16] the Greek historian Herodotus expressed astonishment at the domestic cats in Egypt, because he had only ever seen wildcats.[16] Even during later times, weasels were far more commonly kept as pets[16] and weasels, not cats, were seen as the ideal rodent-killers"
The main point still stands though.