A History of Pet-Keeping: When Animals had Free-Will

Did you know the Pied Piper of Hamelin was a rat-charmer?

The Pied Piper of Hamelin-
charming the rats and inviting them to leave

What’s even more interesting is that in medieval times ‘rat-rhymers’ were an established profession. Their job was to write incantations or poems, which were chanted aloud to induce rats to leave properties where they caused a nuisance.

The rationale behind this bizarre occupation was a widely held belief that rats (and all other animals) were responsible for their own actions, and had the ability to respond to a well-reasoned argument – should they see fit. It was also held that if an animal deliberately misbehaved in active defiance of their owners, then they must accept the consequences.

This extended to animals being summoned as witnesses in formal court proceedings. Indeed, early laws in England gave animals members of the household with the same rights as women and serfs (turning this on its head, this could also be a reflection of the low regard in which women were held).

It was held dogs could not live without man
(Cats however ...)

For example, if a farmer’s house was robbed and there were no human witnesses to testify in court, it was not unusual to summon animal witnesses instead. Their presence in court strengthened the victim’s case (although quite how this worked is not clear.)

However, this also meant that animals could be put on trial held for their misdeeds and found guilty in the same way as people. Thus a dog that followed their natural instincts and worried sheep, could be tried in a court, found guilty, and sentenced to death by hanging.

It took until the 19^th century for the British authorities to drop the practice of sentencing animals to death for their ‘crimes’ and instead think of them as property

This led to a shift in responsibility from the animal onto the owner. It was now the owner’s job to decide if his livestock were a risk to other people, and take steps to prevent harm. Thus the female cat that bit someone interfering with her kittens was no longer held ‘at fault’ and the action was acknowledged as typical of a nursing cat. Furthermore, when a farmer let a vicious ram run amuck, it was no longer the ram that paid the price with his life, but the farmer who was required to pay compensation.

The natural hunting ability of cats
made them less dependent on man

This represents a fundamental shift in the relationship between man and beast. But whilst it might be tempting to view this as a wholesale improvement for animals, this change of attitude was not without its problems.

This new shift meant that people had to assume responsibility the actions of their animals. This led to a change in attitude where people now exerted power over their livestock and expected the animals to comply with their wishes. This was the beginning of people manipulating animals and asserting power over them. In the fields of stock breeding and selective breeding, man went a step further to show his influence by bending nature to his own will.

This in part goes to explain the 19^th century attitude to cats, a constant source of frustration to the authoritarian Victorian male. Cats failed to conform to mans will in the same way as dogs and defied attempts at selective breeding (by escaping and finding their own mate).

At a time when animals were meant to yield their free will and be willingly led, clearly no one explained this to the cats.

Promiscuous and in need of guidance:
The 19th century man's opinion of cats and women

In a world where man measured success by his supremacy, the cat remained blissfully aloof, and so man's answer was to label cats as promiscuous, degenerate creatures –and also led to them being looked on as feminine creatures and labelled as a womanly pet (as opposed to a noble, loyal dog who was a manly pet.)

The attitude of the Victorian male to both women and cats was remarkably similar. He believed they both needed a firm hand to prevent them sliding into their natural state of promiscuity and laziness! 

Cat-egorizing Cats 19th Century Style

How do you organize cats?

Last week in How the Victorians went Wild for Cat Shows we looked at the popular 19^th century pastime of visiting dog or cat shows. However, the organizers of cat shows had a problem that dog show organizers did not have, which was how to group the entries. With dogs it was relatively easy because they came in so many varied sizes and shapes or breeds. Cats – not so much.

 

A tortoiseshell and white cat by Louis Wain

Cat fancier Harrison Weir, arranged the very first cat show, which took place at Crystal Palace, July 16, 1871. His stated aim as organizer in “a labor of love to the feline race,” was to draw attention and therefore favor to: “The different breeds, colors, markings.”

However, Weir had a problem because the existing description of cat breeds tended to dwell on distinctions that highlighted their weaknesses. One obvious solution was to arrange the cat classes by color. Gordon Stables, a man who was active in both the dog and cat show worlds, suggested categorizing cats into 13 groups.

 

A tabby cat by Henriette Ronner Knip

These colors were:

Tortoiseshell, tortoiseshell-and-white,

Brow, blue, and silver tabby

Red,

Red, red-and-white, tabby

Spotted tabby

Black-and-white, black, white,

Unusual color and any other variety.

Stables asserted that color was actually key to the cats’ character, and that certain colors were more likely to have certain character traits. In effect he was trying to justify the color-grouped categories as being more significant than they really were.

He argued: “Properly speaking color is often the key to [the cats] characters…temper…and qualities as a hunter…and its power of endurance.”

 

A black and white kitten by Henriette Ronner Knip

This is an interesting observation, because coat color does carry some associations in the modern age. For example, tortoiseshell cats are often described as “naughty torties” within vet clinics, because they have  reputation for misbehaving.

According to Stables:

Tortoiseshells were “Good mothers and game as bull terriers”

Black cats were “Noble and gentlemanly”

White cats were “Far from brave…fond of society…gentle, and often delicate”

And black-and-whites “Sometimes…did not trouble himself too much about his duties as a house-cat.”

Stables categories didn’t last long and soon went out of fashion. In the 1880s and 1890s Weir replaced them with not dissimilar groupings but broke them down into yet more colors, also long-haired or short-haired, age, and gender. However, he added one final category that was a bit of a showstopper. This was “Cats belonging to Working Men.” 

 

A blue Persian - in black and white

The latter category was put in place out of the notion that animal social standing mirrored that of humans, and it wouldn’t do to have working men getting ideas above their station. Incredibly, everyone seemed to go along with it, and in 1889, out of 511 entries, 102 were in the category Cats of Working Men.

As the years passed, a greater study was made of the science of cat-breeding and specialist breed cat clubs sprang, such as the Siamese or the Abyssinian cat clubs, the Silver and Smoke Persian cat club or the Tortoiseshell society. However, rather than breeding to improve the cats, the main criteria for selecting animals to breed seemed to be rarity, with a cat with unusual colored eyes or a particularly striking coat commanding the most money.

But that was reckoning without the character of cats, which were perfectly capable of escaping and finding their own mate, much to the consternation of their own.

What are your experiences of different coat colors? Have you noticed distinctive personalities based on color or is it a load of bunkum? 

How the Victorians went Wild for Cat Shows

In the 19^th century there was a mania for dog breeding and dog shows.  Dogs proved to be ‘plastic’ when it came to manipulating their size, shape, and general appearance, which leant itself to the Victorian desire to control everything around them. Cats, however, were not so obliging

 

A prize-winning Persian cat

For those ambitious cat owners who wished to exhibit their pet in a cat show and have other people appreciate them, their first problem was to devise categories within which to classify the cats. For dogs this was easy because there were distinct breeds ranging in size from a tiny Yorkshire terrier up to a giant Newfoundland. Not so for cats.

It was ever the bane of the Victorian pet keeper that cats defied their master’s (or mistresses – as cats were far more likely to be kept by women) wishes. Cats had a habit of breeding willy-nilly and behind their owner’s back, which made manipulating matings to produce a specific look all the more difficult. Indeed, Charles Darwin himself said as much in 1868.

 

The first Crystal Palace cat show - 1871

Darwin noted that people’s effort to alter the appearance of cat’s had done – “…nothing by methodical selection, and probably very little by unintentional selection…” except to save the cutest kittens and destroy adult cats that poached gamebirds.

Thus it was accepted that the aspiring cat breeder was actually rather deluded, and that even if they created a stunning cat with wonderful potential, it could all go to pot with the next generation. This was also reflected in the price of purebred kittens, where £1-2 was considered a high price for a kitten “Good enough to win a first-class exhibition.”

 

Harrison Weir- organizer of the first cat show

However, the lack of diversity in the size and appearance of cats did not deter cat fanciers. On July 16, 1871, the first ever cat show took place. Held at Crystal Palace, it was organized by a well-known writer on animal topics and illustrator, Harrison Weir. His objective for the show was to raise awareness of the “Different breeds, colors, markings etc.”

 

An exhibitor grooming her cat at a show

Despite Weir’s best intentions, the main method he hit upon of distinguishing the different categories of cats was color. Even so, the show was a success and within ten years, many of the larger cities followed his example and could “boast of an annual exhibition of feline favorites.”

Next week we look at the categorization of cats at cat shows and the vagaries of fashion.

Cats as People in the 19th Century

In earlier posts we learnt that in the 19^th century dogs’ embodied masculine superiority and cats’ feminine promiscuity. The Victorian’s liked people to be neatly pigeon-holed within society and kept nicely in their place. This even extended to the images in popular culture which reinforced the message that people were happier when they accepted their proper rank. To emphasize this message, there was a fashion for vignettes of animals depicted as people, looking civilized, content, and happy because they had decided to conform to human standards.

 

Detail from Walter Potter's "The Kittens Wedding"

A typical example is the work of Walter Potter, an hotelier by day and a taxidermist by night (he ran a hotel in Sussex and used his wages to finance his hobby.) He started small by stuffing birds and worked his way up to large-scale scenes depicting animals engaged in human activities.

His tableaus may seem bizarre (and even repulsive) to modern tastes but at the height of his popularity Potter’s scenes attracted 30,000 visits a year. It was the human-like qualities of the stuffed animals which made them so popular, of which perhaps one of his best known exhibits was “The Kitten’s Wedding”. (Sold in 2003 for £21,150!)

 

Beatrix Potter's 'Miss Moppet'

In the modern age it is entirely distasteful to think of kittens being killed to provide corpses to put on display (but before getting too irate, don’t forget the numbers of pets which are killed each year because shelters can't house them. OK we don’t display their corpses, but modern society isn’t above killing for convenience.)

It is perhaps the execution (taxidermy) we find unpleasant, rather than the images themselves. Think of Beatrix Potter (no relation to Walter), Louis Wain, and Aesop’s Fables and animals acting out human adventures becomes more engaging than repulsive.

What we also have to remember is that in the 19^th century cats had a more conflicted popular image than today. Memories were long and cats were still associated with witchcraft and devilment, and thought of as dangerously independent (at a time when obedience was prized) and sexually promiscuous (scandalous and totally unacceptable). Cats were linked to behaviors which were frowned upon, such as being independent and promiscuous, and therefore seeing them ‘civilized’ in humanized vignettes made the average Victorian feel self-righteous, masterful, and triumphant.

 

Louis Wain showing cat's behaving badly.

The message in scenes such as ‘The Kittens’ Wedding” was seen and understand by the Victorians. It rather amused them to see cats standing upright like people and engaged in ‘polite society’ activities such as being guests at a wedding.

By having the kittens participate in such a human activity, it emphasized the difference between human civilized society and the behavior of cats. This amused the Victorians and made them feel superior to see animals successfully integrated (or redeemed from their base nature) in this way. Clearly, if you wanted to be accepted in the 19^th century this meant conforming – no quarter given to individuality and instinct, especially if you were a cat. 

How Cats were Used to Discredit the Suffragettes

In earlier posts we saw how the Victorian’s viewed pet cats as overtly female - and this wasn’t a good thing. For a start, the Victorian’s used the link in a negative way by implying both cats and women were promiscuous with a natural inclination to low morals, and therefore in need of a firm male hand for their own good.

The independent nature of cats was another negative point against them. A good wife and mother was obedient to her husband, and her purpose in life was to please her husband (qualities more associated with dogs than cats).

A hard-done-by husband struggling to cope at home,
whilst his suffragette wife is out.
Note the scalded cat under the table

Therefore what better way to discredit the growing women’s suffrage movement than to use propaganda images of cats? Linking women to cats in such an obvious way sounded a warning shot across the bows of early female emancipation, subtly linking independence with promiscuity, and making the former seem less desirable.

In the mid to late 19^th century women fought for the right to vote in public elections. Prior to this they had no political rights and were not allowed to vote in elections. This was because husband’s looked after their women, freeing them from the need to worry about political matters so they could concentrate on rearing children and keeping their husbands happy.

However, since the industrial revolution many women now worked full-time, and the inequality of their lives became increasingly difficult to ignore. Incensed by their lack of rights, women organized themselves into groups to campaign for the right to vote. As you can imagine, their menfolk were less than thrilled and felt threatened by their women wanting to be more independent.

You couldn't be both feminine and a suffragette.
Being a suffragette changed you into a hissing spitting monster

In the 19th century, women Suffragists worked towards 'The Cause', which was a general movement to improve women's rights. Originally apolitical, as time passed the idea of 'Votes for Women' took shape and became a focal point. At first the suffragists campaigned using entirely peaceful means, but by the early 1900s a breakaway movement led by Emmeline Pankhurst became impatient with the slow progress and became increasingly militant. 

By 1912 their motto was “Deeds not words” and these new suffragettes were prepared to go on hunger strike and use violence to draw attention to their cause. All of which left male politicians with the problem of how to handle this political insurrection. One tactic was to discredit the suffragettes, and for that they used images of cats.

A fat conceited cat making a fool of herself
by demanding a vote

Postcards were circulated showing images of hissing, spitting cats, sending a message that femininity had gone terribly wrong. Other images, showing an angry cat holding a placard saying “Down with the Tom Cats”, which implied men had better watch out if women got the vote.

Another image showed a fat, ugly cat dressed in a suffragette’s sash, lecturing a room full of toys. The message being that the cat is self-important and engaging in a childish fantasy.

By 1914 the suffragettes learnt to fight fire with fire. They created the powerful “Cat and mouse” poster, in response to the Prisoner’s Temporary Discharge Act (April 1913)-also known as the “Cat and mouse” act. The government used this law to release women on hunger strike from prison, only to have them re-arrested once they had gained weight and health back at home.

The suffragettes turned male/ female iconography
on its head, to great effect

The “cat and mouse” poster reversed traditional roles, and had men play the part of a cold-blooded killer (the cat) preying upon the defenseless mouse (the woman). As a propaganda poster it made a huge impact, largely because it reversed the imagery associated with men and women.

In Britain, women over 30 gained the right to vote in 1918. 

Victorian Animal Welfare: Don't Leave Your Cats to Starve

In this series of blog posts about attitudes to cats in the 19^th century, this week we look at cat welfare...but all is not as it seems .

The ideal pet cat was passive and well-behaved,
just like their female owner

Victorian (male-dominated) society regarded cats as the embodiment of femininity – and this wasn’t meant as a compliment. Cats were seen as promiscuous, innately sexual, and too independent for their own good and only made good pets if they were less…well…cat-like.

In the 19^th century men expected their wives to be obedient, chaste, and biddable. The message was clear: women needed firmly keeping in line,  or much like any untrustworthy creature their morals might degenerate to those of an alley cat.

By the end of the 19^th century it was estimated most households owned at least one cat, but these were working animals. They lived outdoors, and allowed in during the day to catch mice and keep vermin down. However, there were a significant number of middle class women who kept a pet cat. This was acceptable if the pet was well behaved, because it exemplified the triumph of civilization over baser nature; woman over cat, man over woman.

The problem then arose as to what happened to that pet cat when the household went on holiday. Frequently the answer was to turn the cat out onto the street for the duration of the time the owner was away. However, by the 1880s there was a ground swell of opinion, given voice by the newspapers and pet-keeping manuals, against this practice.

“Don’t leave your cats to starve while you go for an enjoyable holiday.”

On the face of it, this would seem to be the birth pangs of animal welfare concerns for our feline friends. But when you delve deeper it seems the appeal was not made for the reason you might suppose (i.e. the poor animal suffering through lack of food)

The motivation behind this appeal was that a cat forced onto the streets, without the civilizing influence of man, would revert to their bestial habits. This wasn’t a case of chastising owners for abandoning their pets, but shining a light on the weak moral nature of cats, as proven when they reverted to natural behavior.

Stray cats were regarded as the equivalent of prostitutes, while a pet cat was equivalent to a good housewife. To turn one (the wife) into the other (a prostitute) was what the protests objected to – not because they were worried about cat welfare, but because of the example it to women.

Female cat owners were often stereotyped

A cat left to fend for themselves, was “corrupted by their own impulses” (presumably to eat and reproduce) and the degraded animal was no longer a suitable companion for a gentlewoman.

So there we have it: “Don’t leave your cat to starve”…but because 19^th century men feared it might corrupt their wives.

Next week: The Suffragettes and Cats. As a taster, what do you make of the imagery in the postcard show below? Do share your thoughts and leave a comment. 

Victorian Snobbery about Cats as Pets

Last week I asked if you own an iPhone. This week my question is: Do you drive a Skoda or a Ferrari?

The reason is to illustrate how the Victorian’s could be very sniffy about cat-ownership. If we think of this snobbery in terms of cars (rather than cats – See what I did there), those people who own and drive a luxury brand such as Ferrari or Porsche, wouldn’t be seen dead anyway near a humble Skoda. Likewise, you may form a very different mental picture of a stranger based on the vehicle they drive. Thus was also the case for pet ownership in the 19^th century.

The Victorian’s jumped to a lot of conclusion about your status and importance, based on the pets you kept. When it comes to our feline friends the very attributes that made them ideal pets in the middle ages made them less acceptable in the 19^th century. Quite simply, the idea that cats caught mice gave them the mantle of a “poor man’s pet”.

A lot of responsibility was placed on the furry (or feathered) shoulders of a Victorian pet. For a start, an animal that was welcomed into the home was expected to ditch their “beastly” attributes and become civilized. Indeed, the pet’s behavior reflected on the morals of the owner, so the independent nature of cats, plus their propensity to roam and find boyfriends, made them far too base and lascivious for Victorian tastes.

Louis Wain's "The Bachelor Party" - Cats behaving badly

Indeed, dogs were thought to show masculine qualities (and were therefore superior) such as heroism and loyalty, whereas cats exhibited inferior female tendencies such as perfidy and sexual inconsistency. In fact, in the early 20^th century militant suffragettes sought to dissociate the link between women and cats in order to get men to take them more seriously.

Anyhow, I digress. Most pet cats were expected to catch mice, and to encourage this cats were often kept hungry.

“…the cruel mistake of supposing that a cat will be a keener and better mouser if not sufficiently fed.”

However, there were some people who kept cats and were proud of it. But if they decided to sell the cat, for whatever reason, they tended to stress their practical qualities.

“Angora cats. Several very handsome ones, splendid mousers.”

So whilst the Angora was a rare and expensive breed, it was still thought best to point out their hunting prowess. Indeed, the breeding of pedigree cats was considered second rate compared to that of dogs, and ranked alongside breeding rabbits, guinea pigs and other pets of the working man.

It took the founding of the National Cat Club in 1887 for the social status of cats to see an upward swing. However, in part this was done by arranging working men’s cats to be exhibited in a separate class, as if to emphasize the difference between cats belonging to the less affluent and those of the middle or upper classes! Evidently this was a sort of social segregation for cats, or a feline apartite, the like of which would hopefully never see the light of day in the modern age.