Roby Sweet's Blog, page 79

Cats on Stamps: Amur Tiger Cub

Wordless Wednesday
Amur tiger cub on US semipostal stamps.Purchase of these stamps benefits conservation funds for elephants,great apes, rhinoceros, marine turtles, and of course, tigers.Available from the US Postal Service. For more information, visit the US Fish & Wildlife Service.

Book Review: A Hiss-tory of Magic

Miss Cuddlywumps reviews the first Wonder Cats mystery by Harper Lin
A Hiss-tory of Magicis a book of secrets, crime, witches, cats…and magic, of course. It is a story told by one Cath Greenstone, a thirty-three-year-old witch from Wonder Falls, Canada, and it is a good one.
The trouble in Wonder Falls (and don’t pretend you didn’t know there would be some) begins when the café owned by Cath’s hippie aunt, Astrid, is burned. Unfortunately, the Brew-Ha-Ha’s baker and cook, Ted Lanier, is found dead inside the café.
Tragic accident, or brutal murder? And what does it all have to do with the secret, very powerful spell book that has been “stolen” from its hiding place? (And why did I put stolenin quotation marks? Sorry, you’ll have to read the book to find that out.)
There is a detective on the case, but his usefulness is questionable. Thus, it is mostly up to Cath, her cousin Bea, and Aunt Astrid—all witches, unbeknownst to anyone else in Wonder Falls—to both keep their family secret and solve the crime.
Oh, and they also have to keep the villains who are after that spell book from getting their hands on it and unleashing its power.
As you know, humans can do very little without the help of cats, and fortunately there are three exceptionally talented cats in this story. They are Treacle, the black cat with whom Cath has a telepathic bond; Marshmallow, Aunt Astrid’s Maine Coon; and Peanut Butter, Bea’s cat. These cats are indispensable, finding clues for the hapless humans and, best of all, helping their witches do magic.
The magic parts of this book were our favorites. According to the secrets Cath reveals, magic is possible because there are extra dimensions, and cats know these mysterious dimensions better than humans do. Doing magic involves pulling bits of the dimensions this way and that (when you need to do a bit of time traveling, for example), and cats help witches do that.
You humans just have no idea of the things we cats can do.
Cath and family (including the cats) are some good characters to spend a few evenings with. She of Little Talent especially enjoyed Bea and the trolley of books in her kitchen. The mystery in A Hiss-tory of Magic had us looking in several wrong directions, and we enjoyed being stumped, though I do have to say that the conclusion was complicated in a way that didn’t really grab us and frankly left us a little confusedNevertheless, because the characters and story (especially that dimensional-magic thing) were so enjoyable, I give A Hiss-tory of Magic

Timeless: A Sleepy Cat

Wordless Wednesday
Unsigned ink drawing of a domestic cat, ca. 1878.Possibly by Japanese artist Kano.Via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The Case of the Cat Mummies That Became Fertilizer

Mummy of a cat (not from Beni Hasan).Georg Ebers illustration from Egypt: Descriptive,Historical, and Picturesque ,Vol. 1, 1878. CCBY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.
You have probably heard about how the ancient Egyptians venerated cats, so much so that probably millions of cats were mummified and buried in large cat cemeteries (more on this in a future post). Unfortunately, some of the 19th-century humans who discovered many of these cemeteries did not see the mummies as worthy of much respect, or even of much thought. Today’s post is about the strange case of the cat mummies of Beni Hasan.
An amazing findIn 1888, a farmer was plowing a field near Beni Hasan in central Egypt (about halfway between Cairo and Thebes) when he discovered something unusual. The unusual thing turned out to be a large cat cemetery, filled with the mummies of tens of thousands of cats. By one account, there were over 200,000 mummified animals, mostly cats but also mongooses, dogs, and foxes. By other accounts, there were 80,000, 100,000, or 300,000 animal mummies. The cemetery was associated with a temple of the lioness goddess Pakhet, who was a goddess of war and whose name, appropriately, means “She Who Scratches.”
An exciting archaeological find destined to provide researchers and an eager public with troves of information about ancient Egypt and the cat’s place there, no?
Well, not exactly (though the title of this post probably told you that).
Selling the "goods" Instead, the cemetery was thoroughly plundered. An Egyptologist named William Martin Conway was able to visit the site and wrote about the ongoing plundering. The stench was enormous, he said, and the site became littered with bits of mummy cloth, bones, and fur. Children collected some of the more attractive mummies and sold them to tourists. Some of the bones were used as tooth powder.
But most of these mummies, at least 19 tons of them, were shipped to Liverpool, England, where they were ground up and sold as fertilizer. They fetched a price of four British pounds a ton, or nearly $11,000 total in today’s money (conversion by Historical Currency Conversions ).
We have read in various places that some or one or none of the cat mummies from Beni Hasan ended up in either the British Museum or London’s Natural History Museum, but so far we have not been able to track down the truth.
Sources Lamb, D.S. 1901. “Mummification, Especially of the Brain.” American Anthropologist 3 (2): 294–307.
Malek, Jaromir. 1993. The Cat in Ancient Egypt. London: British Museum Press.
Tabor, Roger. 1991. Cats: The Rise of the Cat. London: BBC Books.
Wikipedia. “Cats in Ancient Egypt.”

Lion and Snake by Delacroix

Wordless Wednesday Lion and Snake.1846.Watercolor heightened with gum.Painting by French artist Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863).Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported LicenseThe Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

When Cats Were Used in Magic: The Greek Magical Papyri

A collection of faience cat amulets.Egyptian amulets like thesewere thought to protect thewearer from danger—a much more pleasant sort of catmagic than that found in the GreekMagical Papyri.Photo by Jon Bodsworth[Copyrighted free use], viaWikimedia Commons.
Humans have long thought that cats are magical creatures. Unfortunately, many humans have thought that cats do their most potent magic when they are dead. (This makes no sense to me at all, but then humans often do not make sense.)
Today’s post is not all warm and fuzzy. You’ve been warned.
With that thought in mind, today we are exploring two entries that describe cats being used in ancient magic rituals. These entries are found in the so-called Greek Magical Papyri, which are volumes that were discovered in Egypt. They date from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD.
Making an Esies Our first entry (III.1–61) involves creating something called an Esies, or one of the sacred dead with special powers. The magician of ancient times might want to do this to take revenge on an enemy, for example.
The ritual involved drowning a cat while reciting a certain magic formula (do not try this at home). The magician called on a god, probably Atum-Ra, to exact revenge on some enemy. Apparently the magician could specify exactly what kind of revenge should be taken. After that, the magician would write a certain formula on a clean sheet of papyrus with cinnabar ink, wrap the papyrus around the cat, and bury the cat in a tomb. The burial required recitation of yet another formula.
Once all this had been done, the cat took on a powerful spiritual force that could supposedly “take care of” the enemy.
Sending dreamsTo send a certain dream to someone, the magician required a “completely black cat that dies a violent death” (do not try this at home either). He would use myrrh to write the dream on a bit of papyrus, which would then be rolled up and placed in the cat’s mouth (XII.108).
The text doesn’t mention what kind of dream—good or bad—could supposedly be sent using this method. 
Brief commentary Regarding the ritual use of dead cats to magically take vengeance on an enemy or send a dream to someone, we think it is far better to (a) forgive, or take anger-management classes, and (b) mind your own business.
Sources The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. Ed. Hans Dieter Betz. University of Chicago Press, 1986, pp. 18, 157.
Engels, Donald. 1999. Classical Cats: The Rise and Fall of the Sacred Cat. London: Routledge.

Harry Whittier Frees Photo: Three Kittens Ready for Bed

Wordless Wednesday Ready for Bed.June 24, 1914.Photo by Harry Whittier Frees (1879-1953).Via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Review of Romeow and Juliet by Kathi Daley

Miss Cuddlywumps reads the first book in the Whales and Tails mystery series
Caitlin Hart of Madrona Island, Washington, is five feet tall, impulsive, curious, and tends to insert herself into embarrassing situations (though not on purpose). Her best friend is a dog named Max (we do not hold this against her), and she helps take care of cats in a sanctuary. She even has plans to convert an old cannery into a “coffee bar/bookstore/gathering spot” called Coffee Cat Books, where people can gather, have a coffee, browse some books, and meet some adoptable cats. What a fabulous idea! Too bad about that thing with the body in the cannery.
The body, discovered by Caitlin and business partner Tara O’Brien, is that of the realtor who had been working with them on buying the property. Caitlin, impulsive and curious as she is, takes the fact that she and Tara found the body as a “sign from the universe that [they’re] supposed to be involved” in the ensuing investigation. Her suspicions turn to the local tensions over a proposed condo project that could change the tight-knit character of the island. The question becomes who on the island council—or running for the council—is for the project, who is against it, and would anyone from either camp be willing to kill to see their side prevail?
Or might this case be totally unconnected to the condo project? It’s a puzzlement.
Caitlin has some other things on her mind as well. First is her aunt Maggie who is running for a council seat but has been ill for a worryingly long time. Then there’s an old high school boyfriend who’s shown up out of the blue. And there’s this big gray cat, Romeo, who seems to have temporarily adopted her—though it looks to us like Romeo just needs a place to stay while he’s busy getting close to the neighbor’s prized white Persian, Juliet. When Juliet’s owner (also vying for one of those coveted council seats) disappears, Caitlin becomes convinced that there’s been another murder, and she’s pretty sure she knows whodunnit.
There’s a lot to like about Romeow and Juliet. Caitlin is just the sort of character we like to read about after a busy day. We imagine that knowing her would be a “real trip” (to use She of Little Talent’s phrase). She manages to get into just the right amount of trouble for a cozy. The setting of Madrona Island is another winner, as is the fact that Maggie is co-owner of a shop called the Bait and Stitch, where you can buy all your fishing and quilting supplies. The island also has two self-proclaimed witches, and who wouldn’t love that?
The plot does slow a bit in the middle, and the book’s climax is not as compelling as we’d hoped. Nevertheless, Romeow and Juliet is a lighthearted read that makes for a good weekend’s entertainment.

Tabby: The Cat Named After Silk

Atabby cat in a park.Photo by Hisashi from Japan[CC BY-SA 2.0],Recently, though, She of Little Talent informed me that the word tabby can mean other things too. Old SoLT also told me that tabby at first referred to a type of silk that was produced in a particular part of Baghdad.
Who knew?
First, the silkMerriam-Webstersays that the first meaning of tabbyis a “plain silk taffeta especially with a moiré finish, originally striped, later with a watered finish.” The word apparently came to us from the Frenchtabis, which came from the Arabical-῾Attābiyya, which was a Baghdad neighborhood where this type of cloth was made. The English word tabby started showing up in the mid-1600s to refer to this fabric (so says the Oxford English Dictionary).
This explanation makes sentences like “The Duke of York, who was dressed in a pale blue watered tabby” make sense—and sound a lot less disturbing (the 1760 quote is from Horace Walpole and appears in the OED).
Next, the catBy the late 1600s, tabbywas being linked with cat to describe the familiar striped cat—a tabby cat or tabby-cat—almost certainly because their coats resembled the silk of that name. Later still, in the 1700s, tabby cats came to be called just “tabbies.” By the 1800s, tabby could also refer to any female cat, as in “tabbies and toms” (though we think this is confusing, because old SoLT has met quite a few male tabbies).
Finally, a few other meaningsTabby can also mean
a dress made of tabby (the fabric, not the cat)an old maid or a gossipy woman (the OED suggests that this meaning may be a shortening of the name Tabitha—which could also be how tabbycame to refer to a female cat)a young womana very hard concrete made of lime with shells, gravel or stones (originally called tabby work).

But the best meaning of tabby is and will always be “a cat having a striped or brindled coat.”

1916 Cat Photo by Frank Eugene

Wordless Wednesday
The Cat.October 1916.Photo by American photographer Frank Eugene (1865-1936).via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.