Forgive me for coming in so late on this "cat-chat" -- for the most
part, I heartily endorse the responses made so far, but I thought I
might add a bit more, having long ago done a research paper in graduate
school on dogs and cats in the Middle Ages. (Although I ended up an
early-modernist).

	In general, I found much similarity to today, in that some of my
sources were fond of cats, and others loathed them; this was in contrast
to the almost unanimous high regard of and affection for dogs. In
beastiaries and other surveys of animals, regardless of the author's
attitude towards cats, the pages written about dogs always outnumber the
pages devoted to felines, and there is no ambivalence: dogs are loyal,
noble, brave, and "sagacious" -- the fact that the dog knows his name
was mentioned by both the author of an 1135 beastiary and by
Bartholomaeus Anglicus in his _De proprietatibus_ (c. 1250), as proof
that the dog "hath more wit than other beasts."

	But cats did have their fans, although cats' usual desultory response
to being called no doubt hurt them in the "wit" category. Bartholomaeus'
description of cats seems to betray some affection for them: "He is a
full lecherous beast in youth, swift, pliant, and merry, and leapeth and
resteth on everything that is to fore him: and is led by a straw, and
playeth therewith..."  Supposedly Petrarch so loved his cat that when it
died in 1370, he had it mummified and continued to take it with him on
his travels. (I've often wondered what would happen if we were to
discover the cat's name was Laura.)

	I also found that there were just as many, or more, masculine
associations with cats as feminine. For example, from the c. 1250
anonymous _Response to Master Richard's Bestiary of Love_: "...a man may
be full of gentle words who would be very harsh and cutting if he had
what he seeks, just like the Cat, which at one moment has the sweetest
face and softest, smoothest fur on the outside.  But pull its tail, then
it will show its claws on all four feet and tear your hands to shreds
unless you quickly let it go...I believe that a man also may for the
moment behave very gently and say words to win confidence and to get his
way, and yet he would do far worse than the cat can do, if he were on
top and were not given all he wanted."  According to Baring-Gould's
_Lives of the Saints_, the cat was the symbol of St. Ives, the patron of
lawyers, because "the cat...watches for his prey, darts on it at the
proper moment with alacrity, and when he has got his victim, delights to
play with him, but never lets him escape from his clutches."

	Moreover, while I agree that any animal could be a familiar and that
the association of cats with witches and demons was much more of an
early modern phenomenon, medieval cats were often accused of evil deeds
(the Prioress of Newington was supposedly suffocated by her cat) and of
being demonic.  The dog-adoring, cat-hating late-fifteenth-century
Edward of Norwich wrote "that if any beast hath the devil's spirit in
him, without doubt it is the cat..."

	Finally, while on the whole the early modern period was no doubt a
rougher and more perilous time to be a cat than the middle ages, it is
also not until the early sixteenth century that I found a writer who
seemed to love his cat -- or at least expressed that love -- as one
might today: Joachim du Bellay, who in his "Epitaph on a Pet Cat" called
his late pet "my treasure, my delight" and was clearly grief-stricken at
the loss of "...my very dear/Companion everywhere/My roon, my bed, my
table/ Even more companionable/Than a little dog." (This was also the
first time there was a clear preference expressed for a cat over a dog.)
But cats still had a very long curtain to climb, shall we say, before
reaching the pampered and privileged position they have today,
outnumbering dogs as pets and generating nearly a billion dollars in the
kitty-litter business alone.

Thanks for your indulgence.

Sharon Arnoult
History Department
Southwest Texas State U.


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