I remembered this post about a pesty cat micturating upon a 15th century scribe’s book; it did the rounds a few years ago. “Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many others too. And beware well not to leave open books at night where cats can come.”
What I didn’t remember was that this was a translation. The original script was in Latin. “Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam. Confundatur pessimus cattus qui minxit super librum istum in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum. Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem ubi catti venire possunt.”
So if you wanna curse a pesty cat in Latin, just remember “confundatur pessimus cattus.”
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Scribe humor, heh. I love the meticulously drawn hands pointing out the damage.
I have never had a cat pee on a book, just sit on anything I was trying to read when they wanted attention. I did once have a pigeon shit on a book when I was reading outside, and said “Oh shit!” without thinking about it. I have been to Deventer because my FiL was stationed there during some of the war, mainly involving blowing up a railway bridge because the Nazis were coming, he then got back to the coast, and did the whole Dunkirk small boat thing without a scratch, only to break his knee falling off an army lorry in the UK. His pals went back to rebuild the bridge when the tide turned and a long friendship ensued between that bit of the Royal Engineers and the locals. We took my MiL over to see those friends after he died because she didn’t want to travel alone. Charming place with a good Indonesian restaurant back in the 90s.
this book may well have been made out of skin. cats like different surfaces for different purposes, might they have been more likely to pee on vellum? is the text implying that because one cat peed there, others would follow? do cats that are feeling territorial pee where other cats have gone? was that a known thing to this scribe?
dennis – this stuff always does numbers when it comes up on tumblr. i think they call it marginalia?
jazz – interesting history, cool stuff. sorry u got pigeon’d.
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Male cats certainly use piss as a territorial marker, so yes they will piss over each other’s markings. I don’t think females do it to anything like the same extent, and while you’d still have the damp problem their piss isn’t as smelly as entire male’s piss which is pungent.
I don’t know that they’d be more likely to pee on vellum, but since they obviously did it must have been at the least acceptable. I have noticed our neighbour’s cats prefer to go where there isn’t anything sticking up to tickle them so vellum would work for that.