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Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Thursday, September 21, 2017

a 14th century cat door

art.thewalters.org CC0 license
The 14th-century French cat that used this kitty door must have been a scrawny, hardworking petit chat indeed.  This fine example of feline ingress (and egress, and ingress - do cats go in and out as much when they are calling the shots?) is found at this page of the the Walters Art Museum.  There you'll find that while not many examples of cat doors have survived from the Middle Ages, no less a source than Geoffrey Chaucer mentions one in "The Miller's Tale."  There's also one at Manchester, England's Chetham Library, in a door dating from 1421.


2 comments:

busterggi said...

Clearly from a house that didn't have to worry about raccoons & possums.

parlance said...

What an interesting post! Loved the one at the medieval library.