Medieval Cats Behaving Badly: Kitties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on Fifteenth Century Manuscripts

“The extra issues exchange, the extra they keep the similar.”

–Jean-Bap­tiste Alphonse Karr (1808–90)

When Emir O. Fil­ipovic, a medieval­ist on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sara­je­vo, Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina, vis­it­ed the State Archives of Dubrovnik, he stum­bled upon some­factor that may laborious­ly sur­prise any­one that lives with cats nowadays: a Fifteenth-cen­tu­ry guy­u­script with inky paw prints casu­al­ly tracked throughout it.

And right here’s anoth­er purrpetra­tor. The His­torisches Archiv in Cologne, Ger­many hous­es a person­u­script with an inter­est­ing his­to­ry. Accord­ing to the weblog Medieval­Frag­ments, “a Deven­ter scribe, writ­ing round 1420, discovered his guy­u­script ruined by way of a urine stain left there by way of a cat the evening prior to. He was once pressured to go away the remainder of the web page emp­ty, drew a pic­ture of a cat, and cursed the crea­ture with the fol­low­ing phrases:”

Hic non defec­tus est, sed cat­tus minx­it desu­in keeping with nocte quadam. Con­amusing­datur pes­simus cat­tus qui minx­it tremendous librum istum in nocte Dav­en­trie, et con­similiter omnes alii propter illum. Et caven­dum valde ne in keeping with­mit­tan­tur lib­ri aper­ti in keeping with noctem ubi cat­tie venire pos­sunt.

Here’s noth­ing leave out­ing, however a cat uri­nat­ed in this dur­ing a cer­tain evening. Cursed be the pesty cat that uri­nat­ed over this e-book dur­ing the evening in Deven­ter and as a result of it many oth­ers [oth­er cats] too. And beware smartly to not depart open books at evening the place cats can come.

What I’d sin­cere­ly love to understand is whether or not, nearly 600 years lat­er, the urine scent has left the web page. Cat personal­ers, you’ll know what I imply.

by the use of Medieval­Frag­ments

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cats in Medieval Guy­u­scripts & Paint­ings

Cats Migrat­ed to Europe 7,000 Years Ear­li­er Than As soon as Concept

Cats in Japan­ese Wooden­block Prints: How Japan’s Favourite Ani­mals Got here to Superstar in Its Pop­u­lar Artwork