Abstract
A British chaplain serving in the First World War, relating in his memoir about having found a stray kitten in the forsaken trenches of the Western Front, wrote: "If anything speaks of home, it is a kitten." This paper will investigate how the domesticity and the notion of home was constructed in the past through the cats. Geographically bounded to European civilisations, it will look at the most important feline-domestic relationships from throughout the centuries.
The paper is based on the research of a wide range of literary, normative and visual sources. Cats, one of the primary pet and utility animals of the European past, were present in both physical and symbolic homes of the past.
They were an essential part of the households of peasants, townsfolk, monks and noble(wo)men. Already in the Middle Ages cats frequently slept in the beds of their owners, as per laments of the courtesy books.
Unlike dogs, to whom the backyard of the house was allocated, cats were traditionally reduced to the inside of the house, and to further emphasise this demarcation, owners frequently resorted to cutting cats' ears or singeing their coats to keep them home, since they believed without their ears or coats cats will not dare to roam outside. In paintings and other artworks, cats were used, apart from other purposes, as symbols of domesticity.
They were present in both nativity scenes and typical households of witches. Their bodies served a cultic purpose of protection when used as building offerings in the foundations of houses.
But not only the cats influenced the notion of the home, but also the home influenced the notion of the cats. They were respected as long as they stayed home, considered favourable servants.
Once they ventured outside the home, to the unknown, and went to take their undetectable nightly strolls, they became suspicious, witches' familiars and helpers to devil. Still, even in the height of Christianity's demonisation of them, cats' lasting contribution to protecting the homes from rodents preserved their valued position.