Medieval Cats: Claws, Paws, and Kitties of Yore

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. (Mar.)