holy celtic pets

thanks wikimedia commons (PD:US) and the British Library
Illustration of a fox; detail of a miniature from the Rochester Bestiary, BL Royal 12 F xiii, f. 26v.
Held and digitised by the British Library

. . . Erc, one of Patrick's disciples who lived beside the Boyne, kept a flock of geese, and the half of one of their eggs did him for twenty-four hours. (We are here reminded how the monks sometimes tamed the wild animals and birds of the wood, and turned them into pets. It is related of St. Kieran of Saigir that a fox, a wolf, a badger, and a wild boar were thus domesticated by him, and that he was wont to call them his monks, and himself their abbot. They were in such subjection that when the fox committed a theft, and St. Kieran required him to do penance, he submitted as if he knew all about it! St. Kevin of Glendalough is said to have had a blackbird that laid her eggs and hatched her brood in his hand! But this is only by the way.)

- from James Heron, The Celtic Church in Ireland: The Story of Ireland and Irish Christianity (Service & Paton, 1898), pp. 138-9.  The illustration is only because it's a thieving fox and it's splendid.