Cologne, Historisches Archiv, G.B. quarto, 249, fol. 68r
One more reason to dislike cats. Thijs Porck on the Medieval Fragments blog explains the scene:
A Deventer scribe, writing around 1420, found his manuscript ruined by a urine stain left there by a cat the night before. He was forced to leave the rest of the page empty, drew a picture of a cat and cursed the creature with the following words:
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 cattie venire possunt.
Or, in English: “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 [other cats] too. And beware well not to leave open books at night where cats can come.”
March 5th, 2013 | 12:50 pm
I’ve been an observer of feline behavior all my life. When a cat does this it’s usually personal. This is not the friendly demand for attention of a cat walking across your keyboard. From the cat’s perspective, it was pay back for some perceived or real slight. Makes me wonder what the scribe had done to the cat.
March 5th, 2013 | 1:52 pm
Pangur Bán does not approve this message.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangur_B%C3%A1n
March 5th, 2013 | 5:41 pm
Well, Latin and monks are kind of passe’, cats are still around, doing quite well, thank you.
March 6th, 2013 | 11:01 am
Hope the monk got the rest of his copying better than his drawing of the cat! It looks like a donkey more than a kitty.
March 7th, 2013 | 2:48 am
This sounds like a classic case of the cat “marking her territory.” Could it be that the monk was trying to pass off as his own, what was the cat’s work? ;-)
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact