In medieval and Europe, cats were often unfavourably used as allegories for naughty women. “Unless need compels you, my dear sisters, and your director advises it, you must not keep any animal except a cat…Now if someone needs to keep one, let her see to it that it does not annoy anyone or do any harm to anybody, and that her thoughts are not taken up with it.”Īnyone who has had a cat can tell the writer straight off the bat that trying to get a cat not to annoy someone is a pretty impossible task! I even highlighted in a previous blog post the problems of cats for one medieval author when one left its paw prints on a fifteenth-century manuscript. The Ancrene Riwle, a guide for anchoresses, asks: Apparently monks, and especially nuns, were keeping all sorts of animals as pets, including cats, dogs, and birds, and this was beginning to disturb church services, as they would bring the animals with them! The Church had to beg the monks and nuns to limit how many animals they were keeping and to not bring them into the church itself. That members of the Church were keeping many pets is evident from the legislation the Church introduced to control their members. If you visit the Cathedral today, you can still see the medieval cat door! Exeter Cathedral lists in its accounts from 1305 to 1467 the sum of a penny a week to feed the Cathedral cats if they didn’t catch enough mice. It seems that members of the Church in particular held a fondness for cats. However, this is not to say that cats were never viewed as useful, or even kept as beloved pets. An unfortunate Roman, who accidentally killed a cat, could not be saved, either by King Ptolemy of Egypt or by the fear which Rome inspired.” “Whoever kills a cat in Egypt is condemned to death, whether he committed this crime deliberately or not. Cat fur was also a regular commodity, showing that cats didn’t quite maintain the sacred status they had in Ancient Egypt, where there were extremely heavy penalties for harming cats Diodorus Siculus, an Ancient Greek historian writing in the first century BC, recounted: During times of plague or later witch hunts, cats were often victims to the fear of humans, who would kill them in their hundreds. Many people viewed cats in a more utilitarian manner, as useful for pest control but not for bed-time cuddles. To fast forward to the medieval period, we still find cats being kept as pets, although medieval Europeans seem to have had a more tumultuous relationship with the felines.
This was clearly a well-beloved pet.Īn iron collar and beads found in Egypt’s pet cemetery, via Archaeology magazine. When Ta-miu died, Thutmose had a limestone sarcophagus produced for her. The protection of a settlement also helped safeguard the cats from predators, and so the domestication of cats provided mutual benefit.Īll levels of Egyptian society appreciated a good cat – Prince Thutmose, whose father, Amenhotep III, ruled roughly between 1391–1353 BC, had a pet cat named Ta-miu (meaning she-cat). It is probable that cats domesticated themselves in Ancient Egypt, as the Egyptian farming was vulnerable to mice and snakes, meaning that Egyptian settlements provided easy hunting for wild cats. Cats were closely connected to a number of gods and goddesses, and some believe that there is evidence that they may have been considered to be demi-gods in their own right. But what about cats as pets? Probably most famous are the Ancient Egyptians for their love of cats. So, the idea of taking pictures of Cats is well over a century old. Some of Frees’ cats, via National Review.
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