Man and the natural world

 

In the eighteenth century the domestic cat established itself as a creature to be cosseted and cherished for its companionship. 

The first cat show was in 1871. 

In the Middle Ages cats were kept in houses for protection against rats and mice. Only occasionally do they appear as companions and objects of affection, as in the ninth-century poem by an Irish monk about his cat, Pangur Ban, or the fifteenth-century tomb at Old Cleeve, Somerset, which shows a man with his feet resting on a cat, which in turn has its paws resting on a mouse. Many householders deliberately refrained from feeding them, so as to ensure that they had an incentive to hunt.

Keith Thomas