We can thank a teaching and research assistant at the University of Sarajevo, Emir O. Filipović, for this photo of what must be domestic cat paw prints made in ink across a 15th century manuscript from Croatia. They are around 600 years old. Well at that time domestic cats were pretty much the way they are now. There was no commercially available cat food though! They’d be feed human scraps. I wonder what their health was like. Would there be veterinarians? No, I don’t believe so. There may have been some rudimentary veterinary work by some local person but I don’t believe the profession existed at that time. All cats would be indoor/outdoor cats as they’d have to go to the toilet outside. They would most likely be community cats meaning not owned by an individual person but looked after by a group of people.
Cats have been walking over our documents for thousands of years. Now they walk over our computer keyboard. Same difference. It’s one of their charms.
“It’s not very often that a researcher can come across curious things while sifting through monotonous and dull archival registers,” Filipović said.
He found it while trawling through archived manuscripts at the University of Sarajevo.
Associated: Roman cat paw print in roof tile.
Love this picture. I reckon cats have been walking over our stuff since well before the 15th century. The Romans brought domestic cats to Britain in 200 BC.