Medieval Cats
Claws, Paws, and Kitties of Yore
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
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!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Illuminated manuscripts dotted with paw prints, cat-related excerpts from Chaucer and Shakespeare, and an avalanche of feline factoids make up this exhaustive and exhausting debut. "Felonologist" Cat Nappington (a pen name) slams together dozens of medieval cat proverbs, poems, stories, and images, pairing them with her own quippy captions, which range from the silly ("Bum's out, tongue's out") to the groan-inducing ("My cat breath is stinky. I need a mousewash"). The book's best bits surface lesser-known histories—including how "the first person condemned for witchcraft in Ireland" was said to have summoned a black cat to "poison all four of her husbands" and how the "widespread massacre of cats" that followed Pope Gregory IX's 1233 declaration that "all cats... are demonic" may have hastened the black death—as well as selections from long-forgotten literature, like "Irish monk in exile" Sedulius Scottus's 10th-century love letter to his "white spotted cat, Pangur Bán." Nappington pads out her pages with generic, decidedly non-medieval cat stats (the number of whiskers on a cat has presumably remained constant), but still manages to trace a larger story about how the medieval attitude toward cats swung between love and fear. Readers will find an occasional chuckle and a few new cocktail party facts.
