Catty writing

I’ve been reading Geoffrey Blainey’s excellent, A Short History of the World. And what history of the world would be complete without reference to the wonderful cat?

Cats were kept in houses, granaries and barns less because they were pets than because they were mouse-hunters. When in 1755 Dr Samuel Johnson produced his dictionary of the English language, he bluntly defined a cat as a ‘domestick animal that catches mice’. But surely a cat was entitled to be stroked and petted for its own sake? Johnson disagreed, labelling the cat as ‘the lowest order of the leonine species’. Less than 20 years later, the first edition of an encyclopaedia showed that Johnson’s prejudice was widely held. The volume denounced the cat as ‘full of cunning and dissimulation’, a tormentor, a born thief, ‘totally destitute of friendship’ and very lazy. The cat was kept ‘not for amiable qualities, but purely with a view to banish rats, mice, and other noxious animals’. Not until about 1800 did the romantic movement, and its adoration of the countryside and simple rural ways, begin to raise the cat in the esteem of the western world.

Geoffrey Blainey, A Short History of the World (2000).

Just makes me love cats all the more. And I note that the dog doesn’t warrant even a single paragraph anywhere throughout the 606 page book. Clearly a passenger in world history, and not a player. :-) Johnson’s definition reminded me of the Blackadder episode ‘Ink & Incapability’ where Baldrick accidentally burnt the sole copy of Johnson’s dictionary and Blackadder was forced to try and rewrite it overnight. Baldrick decided to help and was quite pleased with his definition of dog, being: ‘Not a cat’. Reading Johnson’s definition of cat makes me think Baldrick wasn’t that far off, and with a little luck maybe Edmund could have finished the dictionary by Monday morning after all?

Cats and rabbits living together

I discovered another drawing of Laura's, this one featuring all the animals in her life (at the time). Tashi, Pushka, Comma and Ashley Rabby.