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Why Cats Were Hated in Medieval Europe
- seunosewa 11y agoThe part where they said Muslims liked cats while Christians liked dogs is interesting. I wonder if this is still a bit true.
- adrianN 11y agoDogs are unclean in Islam. It's not haraam to own dogs, but many Muslims don't touch dogs.
- tsotha 11y agoIt's not really a stretch to label "unclean" an animal that eats its own feces.
- eru 11y agoLike rabbits? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit#Diet_and_eating_habits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit#Diet_and_eating_habits
- tsotha 11y agoYes, like rabbits. Horses, too.
- bamie9l 11y agoThe health implications aren't as bad with herbivores
- GalacticDomin8r 11y agoUm, yeah I suppose that's one way of way saying. In actually, the health implications are good for herbivores AND other less efficient digestive systems like those in the rodent family.
- teekert 11y agoThe prove that there is no intelligent designer ;)
- boothead 11y agoI feel like this is some kind of meta comment about the tech industry :-)
- TeMPOraL 11y agoMakes you wonder about the contents of dogfood ;).
- dingaling 11y agoCorprophagia is actually a pretty effective method our keeping a litter clean. A nursing dog will stimulate her puppies to defecate and if she can't carry the stools away from the litter she will eat them. Canine gastric acidity can drop below pH 1 to handle this.
- _nedR 11y agoThe behaviour might be hygienic for the dog, but not for the humans interacting with it.
- stefs 11y agoi also wonder if muslim countries suffered significantly less from the plague. edit: according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death#Recurrence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death#Recurrence), that's not the case: > The Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world.[91] Plague was present in at least one location in the Islamic world virtually every year between 1500 and 1850.[92] Plague repeatedly struck the cities of North Africa. Algiers lost 30 to 50 thousand inhabitants to it in 1620–21, and again in 1654–57, 1665, 1691, and 1740–42.[93] Plague remained a major event in Ottoman society until the second quarter of the 19th century. Between 1701 and 1750, thirty-seven larger and smaller epidemics were recorded in Constantinople, and an additional thirty-one between 1751 and 1800.[94] Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague, and sometimes two-thirds of its population has been wiped out.[95]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rprospero 11y agoI remember reading about a village that actually brought in large numbers of cats to deal with their rat problem, believing that the rats were spreading the plague. The cats did a fairly successful job of killing the rats off and, as a result, they had a huge plague outbreak. The scholars at the time concluded that the rats and the plague were unrelated. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the plague is spread by Yersinia Pestis, which is carried by rats and transmitted to humans through fleas. The fleas generally prefer the taste of rat blood and only bite humans when they get really hungry. Of course, when a bunch of cats kill the rats, they have to make do with what's available and the fleas start going after people, vomiting the bacteria trapped within their gut into the human blood stream, spreading the plague.
- sandworm101 11y agoThe total rule against dogs is a relatively modern interpretation in islam. It isn't even to do with the dogs themselves, but that most dogs were smelly and unclean creatures. There is plenty of evidence that the ban really only applied to mongrels, unclean street dogs. Working dogs (hunting/herding/guarding) particularly those similar to salukis, were not considered unclean and were kept. The Quran specifically states that animals caught by trained hunting dog may be eaten (005:004) with the necessary implication that they may be kept and trained. The fear of black dogs is very much ingrained in many Muslim countries. But that tradition predates islam altogether and is widespread even in the west (black dogs are far less likely to be adopted).
- digi_owl 11y agoWell i'll take em. How can someone say no to this? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/BlackLab2009.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/BlackLab...
- DonHopkins 11y agoAnd I'll take the black cats, which are also less likely to be adopted. To make up for that, August 17 is Black Cat Appreciation Day! [1] [2] #BlackCatsMatter #BlackDogsMatter [1] https://www.aspca.org/blog/celebrate-black-cat-appreciation-day-on-august-17 https://www.aspca.org/blog/celebrate-black-cat-appreciation-... [2] https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/black-cat-appreciation-day/ https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/black-cat-appreciation-da...
- DanBC 11y ago> #BlackCatsMatter #BlackDogsMatter Do you realise how tone deaf you sound here?
- DonHopkins 11y agoNo, please educate me. Should I have said #AllCatsMatter #AllDogsMatter ? Why the hissy fit? Are you accusing me of dog-whistle politics? Does this make you feel better? [1] [2] [1] https://www.pinterest.com/foundanimals/black-dog-appreciation-day/ https://www.pinterest.com/foundanimals/black-dog-appreciatio... [2] https://www.facebook.com/BlackDogAppreciationDayBlackDogWalk https://www.facebook.com/BlackDogAppreciationDayBlackDogWalk
- wsc981 11y agoIf you read "The Innocents Abroad" by Mark Twain (written in ~1850 or so), he writes a lot about the bad treatment of dogs in Arab countries (or at least in Turkey).
- LoSboccacc 11y ago"according to medieval writers and other accounts" I don't see mentioned anywhere in the page that taking accounts written in middle ages is going to incur serious bias and how author corrected for it. not many were able to write and chances are if you were one of those you had a lifestyle that involved far less plowing. anyway, same sources different conclusions https://medievalisterrant.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/cats-as-pets-in-the-middle-ages/ https://medievalisterrant.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/cats-as-p... witchcraft at that time was the terrorist of modern ages, anyone could be it, and dog were counted as familiar as much as cats. if you lived closed to a city, it was a dangerous proposition, but then even floating on water was a 'proof' - sure you didn't want to be caught in the fisher nets and burned at a stake, but I don't see much of the rural population going off without cats - that is, if they wanted to survive winters. sadly it seems there are very few studies based on more than writing (i.e. bones - https://www.academia.edu/1061079/LUFF_R._M._MORENO-GARC%C3%8DA_M._1995_._Killing_cats_in_the_Medieval_Period._An_unusual_episode_in_the_history_of_Cambridge_England._Archaeofauna_4_93-114 https://www.academia.edu/1061079/LUFF_R._M._MORENO-GARC%C3%8... ) bottom line: there is quite a disconnect between what they were writing and what they were doing.
- jon-wood 11y agoSadly this is often the way with studying the medieval period, when records were sparse, and most people couldn't write. My guess is they didn't explicitly state it because as a magazine for medievalists their readership is going to implicitly understand that written accounts can't be taken as the opinion of everyone. Having said that, it appears cats weren't universally hated, a quick Google reveals this blog post[1] about cats and their relationship with scribes. It seems that there was a similar feel to many modern cat owners, the well known affection for an animal that will not be told what to do.
- dalke 11y ago"it appears cats weren't universally hated, a quick Google reveals" Or you could copy&paste from the linked-to article: > Not all medieval Europeans hated cats. There are many accounts of cats being kept as pets, including by nuns.
- ajuc 11y agoEastern Europe (starting with Poland) had different attitudes, there were very few witch hunts in medieval Poland (mostly they happened later, in protestant parts), and cats weren't persecuted. Catholicism in general wasn't very fond of witch hunts (it was forbidden by priests most of the time, because "spells doesn't work, there's just one God"), they were hard on the heretics instead. Some people attribute this (big amount of cats) as one of the reasons Poland went through black death relatively unharmed (also the mostly rural population, of course).
- mamon 11y ago"they were hard on the heretics instead" - I can't recall any significant harm done to heretics in Poland, quite contrary: it was considered safe haven for the heretics from neighbor countries.
- ajuc 11y agoThat part I meant as for Catholicism in general. The only heretics persecution in Poland I can remember was Arian brothers expulsion.
- mirimir 11y agoWell, they say that if you die alone with your dogs, they'll guard your body. But cats, they'll just eat it ;) In fact, your dogs will too, if they get hungry enough. But they'll be guilty about it, for whatever that's worth.
- JetSetWilly 11y agoCats are obligate carnivores, generally they will eat flesh and that's it. They are also usually smaller, a smaller body means running out of resources faster. Dogs are a bit more omnivorous than cats. So in the situation where they are trapped with the owner's body, a cat runs out of options faster than a dog. A dog will chow down on house plants, fruit.. or anything it can in extremis. A cat rather more quickly finds itself in the "eat this body or die" circumstance.
- GFischer 11y agoHuman beings will, too, in extreme circumstances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Andes_flight_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Andes_flight_disaster
- eimai134 11y agoIf people don't have any other food, they will eat people who die as well.
- teekert 11y agoI hate cats now. They shit in the gardens of other people. I think they should be forbidden to walk freely outside.
- gadders 11y agoTo be fair, so do foxes.
- filterfish 11y agoAs do humans.
- teekert 11y agoGuess it depends on where you live. We have had days where we couldn't sit in the garden due to the smell. Also I had to through away my home grown tomatoes because they were basically growing in cat-shit.
- megaman22 11y agoHow's that any different than fertilizing them with, say, cow manure, which your store-bought organics might be using? I'm not certain of the chemical composition of cat manure, maybe its nitrogen content is too high or it screws with the soil pH?
- crpatino 11y agoLink-bait-y and extremely poorly argumented. tl;dr - Author claims medieval Europe hates cat. Author picks and chooses examples of people in medieval Europe that wrote bad things about cats. In the last paragraph, Author summarizes and downplays evidence of people liking cats in medieval Europe.
- mrinterweb 11y ago"They feel after him and when they have found him they kiss him under the tail." - That is funny and gross, but still funny.
- xivzgrev 11y agoIn terms of Medieval people hating cats, there was a proclamation from Pope Gregory the 9th in early 1200's where he issued a bull against a cult. This bull apparently included "When the meal had ended, the sect would arise and a statue of a black cat would come to life, walking backwards with its tail erect. First the new initiate and then the master of the sect would kiss the cat on the buttocks" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_IX#Demonization_of_cats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_IX#Demonization_o... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_in_Rama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_in_Rama
- michaelsbradley 11y agoAlthough small house and ferile cats are obviously not lions, I imagine that there is at least some connection to the First Epistle of St. Peter, i.e. when it comes to perceived associations between cats and the devil: "Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour." - 1 Pet 5:8 (RSV) https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Peter+5%3A8&version=RSV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Peter+5%3A8&v...