Medieval Cats: Claws, Paws, and Kitties of Yore - Hardcover

Nappington, Catherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593837509 ISBN 13: 9780593837504

Publisher: Ten Speed Press, 2025

Synopsis

A hilarious celebration of cats in artwork from medieval times.

Look what the cat dragged in from the Middle Ages—a curious compendium of cats unlike any you’ve ever lapped up before.

For more than a millennium, a myriad of medieval manuscripts and artworks painted a picture of cats as playful and curious but also lazy, selfish, and vicious. Today, these masterpieces live on, shining a bright light on the dark age of cats and telling a hilarious story of their paw-some glory. From bum-licking to cat-fighting to mouse-tricking, Medieval Cats is a hilarious celebration of cats who are up to no good.

Learn cat facts from the Middle Ages and the origins of cat proverbs, and discover poems and excerpts from literature that mention cats. Both humor book and peek into medieval art, Medieval Cats is for cat lovers—and haters—everywhere!

About this title

About the Author

Professor Catherine Nappington teaches felinology—the study of cats—at Maine (Coon) University. She lives with her two tabbies in Portland, a city with more than 700,000 cats (true fact), and is the cat-lady capital of the U.S. She doesn't get out much.

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Introduction

The Middle Ages. What a fun time to be alive! It was an era of sieges and superstition, bloodshed and bloodlines, conquest and chaos. Between 500 and 1500 ce, mythical megastars such as Robin Hood and King Arthur rubbed muddy metaphorical shoulders with real-life legends such as Leonardo da Vinci and Joan of Arc, to name just two heroes of history. It was also a time before cutlery, underwear, and flushable toilets, and, boy, does it show. If the medieval ages were a modern Hollywood movie, critics would call it “the bloodiest action-mystery-thriller-fantasy-horror-romance-drama ever made,” with a thousand-strong cast of lunatics, heretics, shamans, pagans, witches, warlords, and dictators too unbelievable to lead the way—but who most certainly did. It was a wild, wicked, and weird time, no doubt. It comes as little surprise that nobody got out of it alive.

At the heart of all this mayhem, there was a horse-and-cartload of curious medieval cats bearing witness—when they weren’t napping in a nice warm spot, of course—to a rather epic thousand years of human misadventure. However, cats did more than just simply observe our shenanigans. They became integral to them (though not by choice). We squeezed them into our storytelling, our superstitions, our sin—even our language—almost as soon as the Dark Ages kicked in. At first, these domestic pets simply kept the rodents in check before being elevated to valued status symbols, creatures we allowed to pounce playfully across the parchment of important manuscripts, their antics recorded with joy by their narrators. Alas, as the medieval age evolved across Europe, cats soon transmogrified into agents of evil in league with the devil, condemned to live their nine lives as mere puppets of sorcerers, according to the stupid and
superstitious. (Cats work for no man, not even the Dark Lord; anyone who’s ever met a cat knows that!) We can laugh about it now, but the end of the medieval era was not cool for cats. Thankfully, they landed on their paws and are now pretty much adored all over. As for humans, the jury’s still out.

Anyway, welcome to this curious compendium that goes seriously medieval on cats. Inside, you’ll find a catalog of frisky felines from ye olde times of yester yore getting up to all sorts of fun—and a whole lot more. Now tell me, which medieval cat is your favorite?

Edition details

• Publisher: Ten Speed Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593837509
• ISBN 13: 9780593837504
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208