The Cats of Antiquity

CATS!

“ I hate cats. ”

“Do you! I adore them.”

“ You are an oddity.”

“ And so are you.”

The human race may be divided into people who hate cats and people who adore them; the neutrals being few in number, and for intellectual and moral reasons not worth considering. Such at least we may suppose to be the view of those grimalkin rabbis who hold that the earth and man were created for cats.

This division takes place early in life. Even in short clothes one boy will stone the sweetest kitten, while another will coddle the rustiest and crustiest tommy. A Hindoo might suggest the explanation, that in some previous state of existence the first urchin had been a dog, and the second a cat; but not having been born in India, I feel at liberty to reject the doctrine of the transmigration of souls; I am quite as much inclined to attribute this diversity to predestination. I mean, of course, a predestination arising from some innate peculiarity of the sensibilities.

The distinction in question not only comes early in life, but it comes for good. I never knew a cat-hater to be converted from the error of his wavs in mature years; nor did I ever know a cat-fancier who was permitted to fall from his beautiful faith. But here a moral discrimination must be made: there are those who pet pussy to please themselves; there are others who pet him to give him a pleasure. The true cat-lover is he whose object, is, not to feel the soft fur or to watch the diverting gambols, but to make the animal happy.

It must be admitted, however, that circumstances have something to do with the development of these contrary instincts. Old maids and old bachelors especially are quite settled in their minds as to whether they hate or love cats. Why is it that celibacy leads to such an interest in the feline race, and will not accept of neutrality? Because the feline race is pettable; because it makes a strong claim to be taken to your bosom; you must either welcome it warmly, or repulse it vigorously. And the celibate, particularly if of the female gender, is by necessity a person who either needs a pet, or who has learned to war with pets. The old maid identifies her cat with some lost man, and worships him; or she identifies your cat with some faithless man, and abhors him. No neutrality for her; a beating heart goes into the matter; she must love, or she must detest.

The select natures who adore cats will hereafter honor the name of Champfleury. With the taste and sensibility of a humane soul, and in that crystalline prose which every Frenchman writes as soon as he is born, Champfleury has composed a charming volume of three hundred and fifty pages on the history, habits, and character of cats. The book is published in Paris by J. Rothschild (not the Jewish banker), and the triumphant fourth edition bears the date of 1870. I shall draw on it largely for facts, and shall venture to add a few of my own.

Authorities differ as to the date, cause, and manner of the creation of the species cattus. The Greek mythologists assert that Apollo having made a lion to frighten his hunting sister Diana, the latter, by way of satirizing his monster, made a grimalkin. But the Greeks being polytheists and addicted to fables, I place small faith in their declarations, especially on so grave a subject. I prefer to listen to the Arabs, who, as a sister people of the Jews, ought to have traditions of the creation which one can “ tie to,” and who, as the authors of the Thousand and One Nights, have earned a title to our confidence. The fact then appears to be that after Noah had entered into the ark, his family represented to him that the mice would devour their provisions; whereupon the patriarch addressed a prayer on the subject to Allah, who in response caused the lion to sneeze a full-grown cat from his nostrils; the result being that the mice were not only kept in order during the Deluge, but were impressed with that timidity which has made them lurk in holes ever since. Such is the narrative of Damirei, an Arab naturalist, who, in the eighth century of the Hegira, wrote a history of animals under the title of Haout el Haiawana. I will simply remark concerning his statement, that I have never seen it contradicted.

It should inspire our youthful nation with an immense respect for cats, to learn that they have been known in history as domesticated animals for 3558 years. Just 1688 years before the Christian era, 1071 years before the birth of Pharaoh Necho, who overthrew Josiah king of the Jews, 935 years before the birth of Romulus, and 88 years (according to Josephus) before the flight of the Jews into the desert, cats first appear on the Egyptian monuments.

What species? Ehrenberg, who examined various cat mummies, says that they resemble a kind still extant in Abyssinia, both in the domesticated and savage state. De Blainville thinks he has proved that the Egyptians had three varieties, and that they all exist still in Africa, both wild and tame. But when we compare cat habits in the time of the pyramids with cat habits in the era of steam navigation, we are puzzled by the difference. Our nineteenth century grimalkin has no taste for hunting in marshes, and swimming back with a booty of dead ducks to his master. Clever as the Egyptians were in getting day’s works out of Hebrews, I don’t believe they could have got any such day’s works out of our water-hating felines. A larger and wilder breed it must have been; a breed still retaining much of the strength and the hunting furor of a state of nature ; something approaching nearer to a wild cat than to what we understand by a tame one.

However, a cat of some kind this animal was; we have statues and medals and pictures showing his form ; we have his mummies and his mummy cases, all cat like; and finally the Egyptians called him Maou. Clearly enough the beast spoke the same language then that he speaks at present. Clearly enough, also, he named himself. “Maou.” Very considerate of the Egyptians to give him his own cry for a cognomen. Perhaps the fact indicates that their language was still in a child-like state, and not very well furnished with words or even with sounds. Possibly also it shows that the animal was known to and named by them long before they were civilized enough and artistic enough to paint and carve his form upon their monuments and medals. If this suggestion seem reasonable we may give his domestication a higher antiquity even than 3558 years.

Well, here we have Maou in old Egypt; under the best of discipline, like everything else in old Egypt; going out hunting in boats with his master; adequate to swimming and to fetching game; a helpful actor in a new civilization ; worthy of showing on monuments. One mural picture represents him seizing a large bird with his teeth, a smaller one with his fore paws, and a still smaller one with his hind paws, with the obvious intent of bringing all three to an Egyptian in a boat. Another exhibits him in a boat, raising himself up against the knees of his master, while the latter is about to throw the curved schbot, or boomerang, at some quarry. Paintings of this character, proving that the cat had been trained as a retriever, date mostly from the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, 1638 and 1440 years before our era.

But Maou was also a member of the family circle. In some pictures we discover him under the chair of the mistress of the house, the fellow-pet of dogs and monkeys, no doubt already a good purrer. A certain King Hana, who appears to have reigned as far back as the Xlth dynasty, has been obliging enough to leave us his statue in the necropolis of Thebes, and, between his feet, the image of his cat Bouhaki. Many little bronze or terra-cotta figures represent pussies decorated with earrings and broad collars, the ear-rings glorious with jewelry in gold, and the collars showing the staring eye which symbolized the sun. As sun-worship is rationally supposed to be the oldest of all human inventions in religion, here, in this glaring eye, we have another squint at vast antiquity.

In fact, Maou had already made his way into the circle of Egyptian devotions. The goddess Pasht or Bast or Bubastis generally wears the head of a cat, and in her temple cats were kept as sacred animals. Egyptian ladies, who made the worship of Bubastis their special orthodoxy, have signified the fact by leaving funeral statues bearing the inscription Techau, a word signifying lobby. By the way, Techau, if pronounced in my fashion, which is of course the correct one, gives a very fair idea of the spit of a suspicious pussy. Another instance of the consideration of the Egyptians for the understanding of cats. Maou and Techau! Of course the cats could comprehend who was referred to.

What part Maou and Techau played in the worship of Bubastis we cannot say; perhaps their main duty was to catch the profane vermin who defiled the temple; probably their reward was to help the priests finish the sacrifices. Three tables — first the goddess; then the holy men; then the holy beasts. By the time that these last had done their part, it is likely that the temple mice had cause to be as poor as our own proverbial church mouse.

After Maou had accomplished his pious labors in this life, he was prepared for the cat resurrection by embalming, and was safely stored in an honorable tomb. He did not make a handsome corpse; even the paint which was sometimes daubed on his preserved face has not rendered him lovely; you feel as little desire to pet him as to kiss the mummy of Pharaoh’s daughter. Long, narrow, and meagre, wrapped closely to the neck in curiously plaited straw, his head alone is exposed, and is too obviously a skeleton caput, its once sleek fur changed to an ugly parchment. The entire “conserve” looks rather like an oblong bundle than like an animal. The cases, on the contrary, exhibit the feline shape, rudely carved and archaic, but not unlike life.

It is probable that Maou had the honor of being embalmed only when he was attached to a temple. Herodotus tells us that in general dead cats were carried to sacred buildings, salted, and then buried in the holy city of Bubastis, the seat of the goddess Bast. From this it would appear that all grimalkins were held to be more or less worshipful. And yet, if we may confide in the confiding old Greek, Maou had some eccentricities which ought to have shaken the faith of his adorers. For instance, he was in the habit of assassinating his offspring, and this for no better reason than that he wanted the exclusive attention of his wife. For a wife he had; the Egyptians, in their benevolence, were cat match-makers; to every tom they assigned a suitable tabby, having due regard to character and appearance. Another of Maou’s freaks was suicide, and that by fire, indicating perhaps a reaction against his aquatic education. In case of a conflagration the Egyptians were less anxious to save their property than their cats, gathering in a crowd about the burning building, for the purpose of keeping the animals at a distance. Meanwhile Maou, possessed with a frenzy, squeezed between the friendly legs or jumped over the adoring heads, and so frequently made a way to his funeral pyre.

“ Whenever this happens,” says Herodotus, with his alluring good faith, “ it diffuses universal sorrow. Also, in whatever family a cat dies, every individual cuts off his eyebrows.”

But no absurdity could quell the Egyptian’s devotion to Maou. Diodorus Siculus relates that a Roman having accidentally killed a cat, the common people of Egypt attacked his house in a fury, and in spite of (he king’s guards and the majesty of the Roman name, put the unlucky fellow to death. It is only fair to add that all domestic animals, and some which could hardly have been domesticated, were worshiped in the land of the pyramids. The ibis was always buried in Hermopolis; the shrewmice and the hawks in Butos. It has been suggested that the priests promulgated the sacredness of such animals as were useful to man, in order to save them from useless slaughter, increase their numbers, and thus aid the progress of civilization. But how does this explain a reverence for hawks, mice, and crocodiles ? We must allow some force here to pantheism; to the idea that the creator reappears in his creatures.

On the whole, Maou puzzles me not a little. If his resurrection should come in my day, I should find him a very interesting study, but I should hardly know how to treat him. In his tastes for swimming, for following up the cast of a boomerang, for bringing game to his master instead of eating it himself, for destroying his kittens, and for committing suicide, I fail to recognize the cat of the nineteenth century. Probably it is a fair inference that the Egyptians, having few domestic animals, took special pains with the education of such as they had, and thus brought out capacities and characteristics which we scarcely suspect. By the way, if the subjects of the Pharaohs had possessed dogs, would they have taught cats to hunt? Perhaps, after all that has been said for Bow-wow, Maou may be the oldest ally of man.

Did Herodotus take a cat back with him to Greece? Probably not; the Egyptians could hardly have been willing to spare him one; moreover the beast is an unwilling traveler. Imagine the great historian dodging about every burning house that he came to, in order to keep his Maou from pelting into the embers! It seems certain that he not only did not carry a cat to Greece, but that he did not even carry thither the taste for cats, inasmuch as we find no mention of the animal in early Hellenic history. The lack of this fancy is the greatest blot that I discover in the æsthetic character of the founders of classic art and literature. It is likely that they were well punished for it; they must have been troubled with mice as well as Macedonians.

No distinct mention of Greek cats is to be found until we reach Theocritus, the inventor of bucolic poetry, born about one hundred and sixty years after Herodotus, or about two hundred and seventy-five years before our era. Even in this case the animal may have been Greek only in a colonial sense, and finally may not have been Greek at all, inasmuch as the poet was a native of Syracuse, and passed several years of his life in Egypt.

“ Eunoa, water! ” calls Praxinoë, in the dialogue of The Syracusans. “ How slow she is! The cat loves repose. Bestir yourself. Quick, some water.”

A lazy and pleasure-loving slave is compared to a cat. Here I find my familiar friend, the soft pet who likes a warm lap, the snoozing pussy of the nineteenth century. At least I find him as the world misrepresents him, for in his special line of business he is not an idle creature, but patient, painstaking, and indefatigable.

And now for a stroke of sublimity. From the XVIIIth dynasty of Egypt down to Agathias, a writer of the age of Justinian, this cat of Theocritus is the only distinct and authentic cat in Levantine history. In all the tramplings of armies, the batterings of sieges, and the tumblings of empires throughout a sweep of twenty-two centuries, we hear but one unsupported purr and one isolated mew. Agesilaus has his Epaminondas; Plato is obliged to measure himself against Aristotle; but the pussy of The Syracusans is without a rival. If there is any grandeur in solitude, here you have it.

As for Agathias, a very clever advocate and scholar by the way, he makes an ass of himself by versifying two epigrams against a clever cat that had killed his tame partridge. A still greater ass is Damocharis, a disciple of Agathias and known among his contemporaries as “ The Sacred Column of Grammar,” who rushes to the consolation of the bereaved lawyer with another epigram. He calls the cat one of the dogs of Actæon; declares that in eating the partridge of Agathias, he had devoured Agathias himself; and charges him with thinking of nothing but partridges while the mice dance and rejoice. At all events, one learns from this hullabaloo that cats were kept in the Eastern Empire to kill mice, and that they were far from holding the worshipful position of semi-sacerdotal Maou in ancient Egypt.

Turning now to the Romans, we learn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses that Diana once took the form of a cat, therein getting ahead of Satan and his witches, who frequently performed the same miracle in the Middle Ages. As Diana was identified by the classic nations with the Egyptian goddess Bast, we find in this story a reminiscence of the sacred Maou of Bubastis.

Pliny speaks of cats; and so does Palladius, a writer of the times of Roman decadence; and from the latter we learn that they were useful in clearing granaries of mice. All thanks to the man for his information, though we could have guessed as much, unassisted. But had he nothing to say concerning the fur, the song, the arching back, the gentle fondlings, the innumerable graces of my favorite beast? There have been only two golden ages for pussy; that of the ancient Egyptians and that of modern Christianity; and the first was even more gloriously golden than the last.

In a Pompeian mosaic, preserved in the museum of Naples, we find record of a cat who must have lived several centuries earlier than the slayer of Agathias’ partridge. He too is a birdfancier, for he has something like a quail under his left paw, and you can see that his mouth is about to open on the neck of his victim. A stout-bodied beast, with thick limbs and a massive tail, he resembles the wild species rather than the tame.

A later age furnishes us with a seal, in the bad workmanship of the Roman decadence, on which is inscribed the name of the defunct owner, a lady called Lucconia Felicula. As Felicula signifies little cat, or kitten, here we have another feline monument. At Orange, in the south of France, a mosaic of the Roman period, representing a cat catching a mouse, was found by the antiquarian Millin. As if in mockery, — as if to show that the chasings of this world never attain their prey, — Father Time had taken the trouble to deface the image of the mouse. There is the eternal pursuit of happiness and success, and there is its object escaping into the invisible.

Next comes a rude funeral monument, also of the Gaulish Roman period, exhibiting a young girl holding a cat in her arms, while a cock stands at her feet. There too the old destroyer has been busy, this time banging away at the feline image, as if it had just occurred to him to avenge the partridge of Agathias. In spite of this wrath, the fact is evident to us that kittens might be pets to children who spoke Latin, and that bereaved parents who spoke Latin might sympathize with the taste. The drawing of the figures, by the way, is wo fully poor, and shows that the Gallo-Roman artists of those days were far inferior to the Japanese of our time, and scarcely superior to the Chinese.

Thenceforward we must give up Roman cats, except so far as we may learn something from old moderns who wrote on heraldry, and who probably had access to Latin works which are lost to us. Palliot, one of the most venerable of prose-writing Frenchmen, who published in 1664 The True and Perfect Science of Blazonry, delights us with the information that various companies of the soldiers of the Cæsars had cats painted on their banners. There was a seagreen cat for the Ordines Auguslei, a half cat on a red ground for the Felices Seniores, and a cat with one eye and one ear for the Alpini. Palliot is so sure of his case that he gives us an engraving of the “half cat,” a lively animal, exceedingly well sketched, whose head, fore-paws, and tip of tail are all up in playful style, while his hinder moiety stands in the unbeknown. With this two-legged quadruped we take our leave of cats classical.

We come now to the Middle Ages, a time of great spiritual potency for tom and tabby. Like some other creatures once identified with the worship of divinities, cats were now identified with the powers and principalities of darkness. They haunted bloodstained castles, accompanied witches in their nocturnal gambols and journeyings, and otherwise troubled the sad imagination which characterized mediæval Christianity, especially among the Germanic peoples. When St. Dominic preached concerning the devil, he represented him under the form of a cat. Numerous legends give us the strongest reason to believe that when Satan desired to trouble the peace of the faithful, he frequently clothed himself in the body, or at least in the skin, of a black tommy. Out of what nest-egg of fact were these tales hatched? No doubt partly out of the old pagan union between the animal and certain forms of idolatry, such as the worship of Bast and of Diana. Among the northern peoples it had once been believed that the car of the goddess Frigga was drawn by cats. There is also a physical cause: the beast’s eyes glisten strangely in the dark; even by day his glassy stare is disquieting to some nervous temperaments; and so, like the owl and other glaring, lustrous-orbed creatures, he was handed over to devil worship.

The old-time peasant of France believed that if a cat was in a cart, and the wind blew from him to the horse, the latter would have a double load to draw. Same increase of burden to horses, if cavaliers wore cat fur on their garments. Sorcerers, as well as their great master, sometimes took the feline shape. A certain woman of Billancourt in France was cooking an omelet, when a black cat which sat in the chimneycorner remarked, “It is done, turn it over.” The woman, being a good Christian, threw the omelet in the cat’s face and burnt him. The next day one of her neighbors, well known to her as a sorcerer, had a scar on his cheek. In presence of these facts, reason bows his conceited head, and faith asserts dominion. Perhaps it is the cats who give power to planchette, and enable Mr. Home to fly out of windows.

We must not be specially bitter on cats because they were so mixed up with the rampagings of Lucifer. The canine race had something of the same repute; the ringleaders of the Salem witchcraft were aided by Satan in the form of a large black dog; and Tam O’Shunter saw him at Kirk Alloway in the guise of a “ towsy tyke, black, grim, and large.” Moreover, grimalkin now and then turned against his satanic master. A French architect of the good old believing times being unable to finish an audaciously planned bridge, the devil offered to bring the work to completion on condition that he might have the first soul which crossed it. The work done, the sly architect scared a cat over; the devil, though disappointed, advanced to seize his prey; the beast made fight and scratched his black face for him ; defeat and flight of the arch enemy.

Another true story. A certain Count of Combourg, who was noted for possessing a wooden leg and a black cat, died several centuries ago for reasons best known to his doctor. But something troubled his repose, or he had provocation to trouble that of other people. Every now and then he turned out for a nightly promenade, and was encountered an unpleasant number of times on the grand stairway of his castle ; but occasionally, finding that his personal attention was not needed, or being occupied otherwheres, he sent his wooden leg and black cat on these expeditions. Champfleury gives us an impressive sketch of the beast descending the grim old stone staircase, closely followed by the stumpy limb with bandages flying. Such is the verisimilitude of the picture that infidelity must fade before it.

Degraded like Moloch, Beelzebub, Lucifer, and other names of ancient worship, to a companionship with Satan, the cats had a hard time of it among our sombrely and savagely pious ancestors. The culmination of many a religious féte in France, Germany, England, etc., consisted in pitching some wretched pussy off a height or into a bonfire. In 1573 certain Frenchmen received a quittance of a hundred sols parisis for having furnished during three years all the cats necessary for the fires of the festival of St. John. In 1604 the boyish Dauphin of France, afterwards Louis XIII., obtained mercy of the king for all the cats which were to be scorched on this pious occasion. The same Dauphin, however, was not so far enlightened but that he hunted cats on horseback, doubtless by way of preparing him for the chase of wilder game.

In 1323 the Abbot of Citeaux, assisted by several of his monks, buried a black cat in a box, with provisions for three days, all with a view to dealings with the devil. Animal howls; citizens dig him up; abbot and monks are tried for satanic practices; two are banished and two burnt at the stake. Now and then a cat got into more intelligent, humane, and truly pious company. A certain hermit of the time of Pope Gregory I. is celebrated by John, a deacon of Rome, for the blessed content with which he regarded his only property, a no doubt exemplary grimalkin. Deacon John even assures us that the holy man received a revelation from heaven, congratulating him on being as happy in his tommy as the Pope in all his splendor and power.

No longer ago than 1818 a decree was issued at Ypres, in Flanders, forbidding the throwing of a cat off a high tower in commemoration of a Christian festival. In France such ignoble devotions were practiced among the peasants until very lately. To see the laborers of Picardy skylarking around a pile of blazing fagots, some dancing, some playing fiddles, some firing guns, and the children screaming “ Hiou! hiou!” while a cat, smothered by the smoke drops screeching into the flames, is not a delightful religious reminiscence.

If the race had mediæval troubles, it also had an occasional honor, especially in the way of blazonry. Palliot, who has thrown such light on Roman ensigns, blesses us with the further information that the Burgundian Clotilda, wife of King Clovis, inherited from her paternal house a coat of arms representing a sable cat killing a rat of the same. The German family of Katzen had a silver cat holding a mouse, on a field of azure; the Chetatdie of Limoges, two silver cats, one above the other, on azure; the Della Gatta, Neapolitan nobles, a silver cat, on azure.

Meantime the animal had a political significance, and thereby got into the noble heraldry of nations. He was the emblem of independence: perhaps because of his somewhat solitary and unattached disposition; perhaps because of his watehfulness, " eternal vigilance being the price of liberty.’' This idea of independence or freedom was attached to him very early. In the Temple of Liberty, built at Rome under the direction of Tiberius Gracchus, the goddess was represented with a cat at her feet. The Sessa family, the great printers of Venice in the sixteenth century, used the figure of a cat as their printing mark, probably as a symbol of the freedom springing from intelligence. During the first French revolution the emblematic grimalkin of Tiberius Gracchus was resurrected, and in the patriotic pictures of Proudhon and others we once more find him sitting at the feet of the goddess of Liberty.

Having now traced the history of the animal from his earliest recorded appearance in the family which man has gathered, let us trace the history of his present name: Vulgar Greek, katus; vulgar Latin, catus, or caltus ; Italian, gatto ; Spanish and Portuguese, gato ; French, chat ; Burgundian, chai ; Picard, ca, or co ; Provencal, cat; Catalan, gat ; Walloon, chet ; old Scandinavian, kottr ; Anglo-Saxon, cat ; German, kater or kalze ; Danish, kot : Swedish, katt ; Welsh, cath : Cornish, cath ; Irish, cat ; Lapp, gatto ; Polish, kot ; Russian, kots; Basque, katna : Turkish, keti ; Armenian, kaz ; English, CAT. In Arabic kitta, or kaita, means a male cat.

Isidore, one of those decadent Roman authors who brought cattus from the vulgar speech into literature, explains that it is derived from cuttare, to see, meaning thereby a seeing or watching animal. Champfleury looks askant at this derivation, and suggests that the word may have got into Latin from the Teutonic languages, an idea which seems probable enough when we reflect that Germans made up whole legions of the Roman army at the time when cattus appears in Roman writings.

Now for varieties. The catamount of North America is not a cat, but a far larger and stronger animal, and of a different species. The wild cat of Europe is nothing but the tame cat in a savage state. The Manx cat not only differs from the common breed in having no tail, but his hind legs are longer, his head larger, and his intelligence, I think, somewhat higher. Possibly the spinal nervous force which was formerly absorbed by his caudal extremity has ascended into his brain and reinforced its action. The suggestion is thrown out for the benefit of those philosophers who insist that man’s first step in improvement was the getting rid of his tail. If this reasoning is correct, we may expect something great of the Japanese pussy, which is also tailless.

At Tobolsk there is a red breed; in China a variety with drooping ears; in middle Asia the Angora, with long for and a mane. Of this last species is the favorite of Victor Hugo, a monstrous old curmudgeon in the style of a small lion, who inspired the poet Méry with the saying, “ God made the cat to give man the pleasure of caressing the tiger.”

A grimalkin which was brought from the coast of Guinea to England had short, bluish-gray fur, a curiously wrinkled skin, as black as a negro’s, ears partially naked, long legs, and a general eccentricity of aspect. In New Zealand, in the Highlands of Scotland, and probably in all other countries, the animals which return to the savage state take on a dappled gray color. When therefore you see a gray cat, you may infer that he has a good constitution and a large infusion of the hunting instinct.

Wild cats, when domesticated, bear a high character as mousers, but are furious quarrelers with their own sex of the tame species.

J. W. De Forest.