Soldiers and cats?

Yes, the Roman armies that marched through and conquered much of Europe and northern Africa carried cats with them and kept them at their forts, which has been proven by archaeologists who have dug up cat remains. While Roman men in general liked dogs, cats were useful for keeping rodents out of the soldiers’ food supplies and from gnawing on bowstrings and other leather goods. The Roman troops apparently admired the cats as predators, and perhaps they saw themselves as cats, preying on the “barbarians” as cats preyed on the troublesome rodents.

Morphing to cattus Felis

The early Romans used felis to refer to the domestic cat, but in time the word cattus replaced it. When did the change occur? We can’t be certain, but we do have a clue, since we know that by the sixth century A.D., one unit of the Pretorian Guards (the emperor’s personal bodyguards) was known as the Catti, meaning “cats.” We can assume that these soldiers did not see anything negative—certainly nothing feminine—in applying the name “cats” to them selves.

Pet name “Kitten”

You might recall the adorable daughter nicknamed “Kitten” on the old TV sitcom Father Knows Best. Well, “Kitten” was around as a pet name for a girl long before television. Among ancient Romans, the Latin names Felicla and Felicula were popular among women, and both names mean “little cat” or “kitten.” There are tombstones with Felicla or Felicula carved in them, and some of the tombstones even have a ﬁgure of a cat carved into them. The names Catta and Cattula—both meaning “cat,” of course were also used for Roman women. And though they were more rare, the names Feliculus, Cattus and Cattius were also borne by some Roman men.

From ancient Pompeii to today

Some things never change. If you have a birdbath in your yard, you’ve no doubt seen your cat hungrily eye the birds in it and probably try to climb it. (A good birdbath is unclimbable, of course.) Archaeologists have dug up a similar scene from Pompeii, the Italian city famously destroyed by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius. A mosaic from the ruins of Pompeii, dating from about the year A.D. 79, shows a spotted cat eyeing three long-tailed birds in a bird-bath.

Roman tomcats

The ancient Romans have a well-deserved reputation for their lax sexual morals, which is evident in their literature. The dramatist Plautus (circa 251–184 B.C.) wrote numerous comedies, and some of them deal very bluntly with sexual themes. Some of his plays, written in Latin, use the term feles virginaria. Translated literally, this means “cat of the virgins,” but Plautus used a different meaning, “cat who preys on virgins”—that is, “tomcat,” the human male seducer of women. Other Roman plays refer to a man who is a feles pullaria, “cat of young women,” which, again, refers to the seductive male human.

Etruscan cat decor

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has a bowl dating from the sixth century B.C. that was produced by Etruscans who dwelled in Italy. We can safely assume that Etruscans not only had cats but were very fond of them, for the bowl’s rim is decorated with the carvings of four cat heads.

Greeks go Italian

The ancient Greeks were a seafaring people, they acquired cats through trading with Egypt. As Greeks traveled, they took their cats with them, including to their colonies in southern Italy. Archaeologists have found coins in that region, dating from around 750 B.C., showing a man (the colony’s founder) seated in a chair, while a cat on hind legs plays with something in the man’s hand. Another coin from about the same period shows a man with a cat seated behind him.

Bosomy and catty

The temple of the goddess Artemis in the city of Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Artemis, as already noted, was a virgin goddess—but also a fertility goddess. You can see the fertility aspect clearly in some of her statues found at Ephesus, where she is depicted having dozens of breasts. Some of these images show her body engraved with images of cats, and the cats themselves bear large (and very human-shaped) breasts.

Crossing to Europe

How did cats get to Europe? Historians think that the ancient Greeks learned about cats through their trade with Egypt. The Greeks were pleased to see that Egyptians had found a perfect rodent exterminator, and an attractive, clean companion to boot. To the Greeks’ dismay, the Egyptians had no interest in sharing cats with the rest of the world, so the Greeks did the obvious thing and stole several pairs and took them home to become the ancestors of Europe’s cats.

Pagan to Christian

Egypt has been a Muslim country for so long that we forget the country followed Christianity long before Islam even existed. As Christianity spread from its home in Palestine, Egypt gradually changed its religion from pagan to Christian. Old habits die hard, and some people were slow to give up worshipping their old gods, including the cat-headed Bast.

The Christian writer Clement, writing about the year A.D. 200 in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, mocked the old religion and its worship of animals and animal-headed gods. He wrote of the huge temples, each with an inner sanctum, and in that inner sanctum, curled on a purple cushion was . . . an animal, often a cat. Clement, like many Christian writers, claimed that Christians were wiser in worshipping their invisible God than pagans, who were fools to build a temple to honor a cat or crocodile.

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