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I was reading about Diodorus (born 44 BC) and his library and ran across an interesting tidbit. We all know the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats. Well some Roman in Alexandria killed a cat. The populace surrounded his house and killed him despite the Roman high official's pleas (the Romans had a delegation in town to negotiate with Ptolemy Auletes) to spare the man. Diodorus wrote about the incident and then the translator went on to comment on how at that time cats were beginning to show up in Sicily and Italy for the first time about then.
I had not realized domesticated cats were confined to the African continent (?!) up to that time.
[This message has been edited by arriki (edited September 11, 2008).]
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The mythos that sprang up in Italy and Sicily when cats arrived is sort of fascinating too. The are closely associated with death. Some myths having them on the side of the angels, and the others, well, on the other side. Posts: 1210 | Registered: Feb 2006
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I think it's an intelligence thing. I have a cat named Luci, you can guess what that's short for. That cat has some devilish ways. She's sly and has conditional love for her masters, that just doesn't scream harmless diety to me.
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It's interesting to look throughout history to see when cats were coveted and when cats were considered a nuisance. Consider Europe during the black plague, didn't they use cats to kill the rats which helped spread disease?
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innesjen, few people realized cats were beneficial to preventing the plague. In the seventeenth century, cats were blamed for spreading the disease. I've read that 200,000 cats were murdered in 1665 London due to anti-feline superstition.
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I read about a Chinese emperor who loved his cat so much that when he found it asleep in the sleeve of his favorite robe he planned to wear that day he had his retainers cut the sleeve off rather than wake the sleeping kitty.
Inscrutable. My baby would've been in for a rude awakening.
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