By: Martine Carlsen
ENTER THE DARK AGES! ...in the history of cats. Right after the end of the middle ages - beginning around 1550 and lasting about a century - the Christian church decided that cats were the source of all evil. Cats had always been associated with gods; in Egypt it was Bast, goddess of life and family and in the northern part of Europe it was Freya, who was always surrounded by cats. But these were not Christian gods, so cats now became "animala non grata". This was probably when the saying "curiosity killed the cat" entered the English vocabulary; "They wanted to see the world, and look where it got them!" Yes, curiosity did kill a lot of cats during these terrible times. Cats were hunted down, burned, drowned and hanged. And people who had the audacity to so much as look kindly at a cat, were deemed witches. And they were killed as well. This was NOT a good time to be a "crazy cat lady" in Europe!During this time cats were also being blamed for spreading the plaque, when in fact it was the disease-carrying rats that managed to kill off almost half the European human population by spreading plagues and other epidemics. And as the humans had so efficiently killed off most of their cats, there were practically none left to kill the rats! That'll teach them to treat cats so disrespectfully!!!But eventually things got better. The Europeans came to their long lost senses and realized that cats were actually good to have around! Less rats, no more plague and soon the former so beautiful and harmonic cat-human relationship made its come-back. And when the first European settlers came to America in 1600-something, they brought cats with them to THE NEW WORLD. Good thinking! Their cats kept their homes, farmhouses, henhouses, outhouses and doghouses rat and mice free. Well, maybe not doghouses!Yes, the human bipeds truly rediscovered the value of cats. They took cats into their homes again and this time into their hearts as well. The cat became more than a useful little mousetrap, it became a PET.And so cats - being cats - now started to claim their INDOOR territory; the couch, the best arm chair, the dining table, the bed, the lingerie drawer... in short: THE WHOLE HOUSE. And finally things were as they should be between cat and man.5000 years ago the Egyptians worshipped cats and showed their admiration and respect by mummifying them after death and depicting them on vases, amulets, rings and inside tombs! Today we pay homage to cats by putting pictures of cats on coffee mugs, napkins, sofa pillows, mousepads, clocks, refrigerator magnets and t-shirts! And in a thousand years from now, I'm sure there will be an enormous image of a cat on our first spaceship to Mars.
Martine Carlsen was 6 years ago adopted by two silver-gray Abyssinian cats, Sonny and Cher, and if you ask them, this article would or could never have been written without their help and inside knowledge. Martine Carlsen works as a web designer and spends most of her spare time working on her website, http://www.cats-on-tshirts.com
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