history – Page 2 – Pain In The Bud

The First Edition Of Webster’s Dictionary From 1828 Says Cats Are ‘Deceitful’ And ‘Extremely Spiteful’

What would the Dictionary Man think of a modern American society dominated by the power and cuteness of cats?

Cats have taken over the internet, claim a mighty share of the $64 billion Americans spent on pet food in 2023, and have essentially installed themselves as the leisurely masters of 28 percent of American homes.

But it wasn’t always that way, and a look at the first-ever edition of Webster’s Dictionary reveals a very different attitude toward our furry overlords:

“The domestic cat needs no description. It is a deceitful animal, and when enraged, extremely spiteful. It is kept in houses, chiefly for the purpose of catching rats and mice.”

Wow. Whoever does feline PR should get a raise, because we’ve gone from “We tolerate the imperious little bastards because they’re good at killing rodents” to “Does my little angel want a snack? How about some ‘nip then? Anything for my bestest little pal!” in the span of two centuries.

Buddy to Noah Webster: Bow! — Buddy 1, Noah Webster 0. Naturally.

Noah Webster, whose name is now synonymous with dictionaries, saw the effort to standardize spelling and pronunciation as central to formalizing an American linguistic identity distinct from our mother country. Or, as he put it, “[t]o diffuse an uniformity and purity of language in America” that would not only differentiate our English from England’s, but also unify the states at a time when many people still viewed the idea of a united states with skepticism.

By doing so, he hoped America would avoid the pitfall of dividing itself into regions of nearly mutually unintelligible dialects, a problem that plagues other countries. Consider the fact that India has almost 800 distinct languages and dialects, down from a staggering 1,652 in 1961 as hundreds of local languages died with the last generations of their speakers. Hindu, the country’s most popular language, is spoken only by about 43 percent of the population.

The goal, Webster wrote when he published his dictionary’s first edition, was “to furnish a standard of our vernacular tongue, which we shall not be ashamed to bequeath to three hundred millions of people, who are destined to occupy, and I hope, to adorn the vast territory within our jurisdiction.”

As dictionary.com notes, Webster wrote that passage in 1828 when the US population was just 13 million and vast swaths of what we now consider familiar territory was at the time largely unexplored wilderness.

His prediction of an America of 300 million people came true in 2006. Today there are approximately 335 million of us.

In other words, a hell of a lot has changed since the Connecticut born-and-raised Webster cobbled together a uniquely American system of spelling and pronunciation, so maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that attitudes toward cats have shifted so dramatically.

Still, we’d love to see the look on Webster’s face if we could bring him forward in time and show him how the “deceitful” and “extremely spiteful” little furballs have come to such prominence in American culture. What would Webster make of the spoiled modern house cat, with her condos, tunnels, toys, harnesses, bowls filled with salmon and duck, and even psychoactive recreational drugs for their enjoyment?

Bow before your feline overlords, Webster!

Editor Cat Says — “We have made some edits, humans. See to it that the next edition includes this new and improved definition, or we shall withhold snuggles.”

Tokyo’s ‘Waving Cat’ Temple, Gōtoku-ji, Has Run Out Of Cats

The world-famous cat shrine has experienced a surge in tourism, leaving it bereft of the familiar statues that are inspired by the legend of a friendly cat.

Gōtoku-ji temple has a unique problem.

The complex, where legend says a friendly waving cat led a Japanese feudal lord and his men to warmth and safety ahead of a brutal storm, has seen an influx of travelers since Japan relaxed its COVID-era restrictions and tourists have returned.

Now Gōtoku-ji can’t keep up with the demand for maneki neko, the ubiquitous “beckoning cat” statues that visitors purchase at the shrine’s tiny gift shop, the Washington Post says in a new report. People who come to the temple write prayers on the statues and place them in a perpetually-expanding section of the shrine grounds.

The cats are said to bring good luck, with variations in their designs and colors: red for health, pink for love, gold for success and so on. White maneki neko, which are sold at the shrine, are the original and “all purpose” prayer cats. The shrine is Buddhist, but practitioners of Shinto, Jainism, Christianity and other religions write prayers on the little cats, hoping they’ll be heard by whichever version of God they believe in.

The manufacturer, which also makes statues for the Lunar New Year and other festivities, can’t keep up with the demand. Now staff at Gōtoku-ji have put up signs apologizing to visitors. They say they don’t know when they’ll get more maneki neko.

When I visited in 2019 there were many thousands of the iconic statues, but the photos from Monday’s WaPo story show thousands more placed on recently-built shelves. Temple staff have begun asking visitors to take their maneki neko home with them instead of leaving them at Gōtoku-ji. They clean, shelve and organize the thousands of statues currently there and won’t dispose of them because they represent the prayers of visitors, but the volume has become unmanageable.

Maneki Neko at Setagaya Tokyo — Visitors leave their own maneki neko statues at the shrine, often with personal messages asking for different blessings and written in black marker on the back of the statues. Credit: Pain In The Bud

Despite Gōtoku-ji’s rise in popularity, I still recommend checking it out, especially for cat lovers who are headed to Japan. While most of Tokyo’s most famous shrines are located in the city proper, with modern skyscrapers looming above temples that date to pre-modern Japan — never letting you forget you’re in a bustling metropolis — Gōtoku-ji is in Setagaya, a mostly-residential ward.

The temple grounds are surrounded by homes and they’re quiet in a way that others aren’t. The shrine is well-manicured and beautiful, dotted with statuary as well as centuries-old wooden temple structures.

When I was there a smiling elderly docent walked the grounds carrying a photo album that showed the temple and its structures over the years. With my sister-in-law’s rudimentary Japanese we were able to get a bit around the language barrier, and he told me one of the most striking buildings, a three-story tiered wooden tower, was home to one of the resident cats who liked to sleep on its second floor.

I wasn’t able to catch a glimpse of the little one but I imagine Gōtoku-ji is one of the best places on the planet a stray cat could call home. Like the people of Turkey, respect for cats is ingrained in Japanese culture and temple cats in particular are treated extremely well. Some even have their own Instagram pages and fan clubs, becoming tourist draws in their own right.

Maneki Neko Setagaya Tokyo — Maneki Neko statues at Setagaya shrine. Credit: PITB

WaPo’s Guide To Taking Better Photos Of Your Cat, PLUS: Snopes Weighs In On Cats And Bubonic Plague

A historian casts doubt on tales of widespread cat purging, tracing the origin of the claims to a novel published in the 1990s.

The Washington Post has a new guide for taking better photos of cats and dogs with some solid advice for people using smartphones as well as more traditional cameras.

The article is in front of the paywall so you don’t need a subscription to view it, and it emphasizes a few major points I’ve often written about when people ask me how I’ve been able to get certain shots of Bud:

Always let your cat get used to the camera, whether she sniffs it, head butts it or just wants to see it up close. Let her check it out and lose interest and then it becomes just another thing, allowing you to begin capturing more candid-style photos.
Bribe ’em: Your cat’s a model and deserves compensation. A few treats will keep him hanging around and happy as you snap away.
Pay attention to the lighting, especially if you’re shooting a black cat or a kitty with a darker coat pattern. Unless you’re going for a silhouette or a sunrise behind your furry friend, keep your cat facing to the right or left of the primary light source so you’re getting light and shadow to put those feline features in relief. It’s also worth taking a close look at how professional photographers shoot melanistic jaguars and leopards, carefully using light to highlight their features. In the right conditions their rosettes are still visible, they’re just slightly different shades of black. While house cats don’t have rosettes, the same attention to light and detail can help pick out the contours of their beautiful coats.

Black jaguar at Edin Zoo — Under the right light conditions, the contours, spots and rosettes of a black jaguar are visible in beautiful detail. Credit: Edin Zoo/Wikimedia Commons

Did People Really Slaughter Cats During The Plague?

It’s often claimed that Europeans murdered felines en masse during the waves of Black Plague that devastated Europe during the Dark Ages, visiting countless cruelties on cats while inadvertently amplifying the spread by nearly wiping out disease-carrying rodents’ most effective predators.

In a new post that closely examines documents and evidence from burial sites of the era, Snopes concludes there was much less cat-killing than claimed, and the claims of widespread purging at the hands of pandemic-weary zealots have their roots in a 90s novel, which was then circulated on the web as fact.

Sites where as many as 79 sets of cat bones from the era were found show clear signs that the animals were slaughtered for their fur, and a singular slaughter in 1730s Paris often cited as proof is not only a few centuries off but was also motivated by class hatred, not fears of the plague.

While the papal bull Vox In Rama was real, and a famously zealous inquisitor really did make the preposterous claim that Satanists had a ritual that involved literally kissing the asses of black cats, the pope never called on anyone to kill felines and there’s no evidence that people took it upon themselves to do so. There was plenty of other unbelievable superstitious idiocy that led to the deaths of animals at the time, including the practice of putting animals on trial for alleged crimes, but Europeans weren’t rampaging through towns and killing cats.

Snopes quotes Welsh historian Mike Dash, who says the modern claims of widespread cat-killing are “almost certainly a modern internet-based fabrication.”