TOP-8 facts from the history of cats in Russia

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Today it is absolutely impossible to imagine our life without cats. Someone keeps them at home, like, for example, our editor-in-chief, and someone - like the author of this text - owes them a strong allergy and therefore prefers to admire the cats from a distance.

But even if you start crying and sniffle after five minutes of communicating with the furry creature, you still love and admire it.

It seems that there have always been cats. Or is it still not? For example, what was the situation in medieval Russia?

When we started looking for information, it turned out that there is not a single large specialized study about ancient Russian cats, and most of what can be found on the Internet is reprints of one (very good) article written about 30 years ago. To this material, the authors, to the best of their imagination, add vivid details, which, however, are usually not confirmed by anything. We firmly decided to figure it out and, separating the wheat from the chaff, we collected 8 main facts about the life of cats in Russia.

Fact number 1: in Ancient Russia, cats were brought in in the IX-X centuries

Archeology can answer the question of when seals were first introduced in Ancient Russia. On the territory of the Rurikov settlement, three kilometers from the center of Veliky Novgorod, scientists discovered fragments of the skeletons of six cats in the layers of the 9th-10th centuries. Cats were probably not widespread at that time (compare the number of feline bones with the number of canines according to the table). Thanks to the finds of archaeologists, we can confidently say that the cats definitely lived in the houses of the Russians (and both the representatives of the elite - the prince and his squad, and the attendants lived on the Rurik settlement) already during the formation of the Old Russian state - that is, during the times of Prophetic Oleg, Olga and Svyatoslav. As for the maintenance of these animals by the peasants, we are forced to shrug our hands - no traces of the life of cats in the villages have yet been found. However, it should be noted that rural settlements in Eastern Europe have been poorly studied, and new discoveries may still await us.

Fact number 2: the first mention of seals in the annals is due to the fact that they were … eaten

Sadly, but most often in written sources, cats are mentioned as food. Of course, in ordinary life they were not eaten - this happened only in an emergency: during a famine. In the first Novgorod chronicle, the terrible events of 1230 are described as follows: “and the truncating Yudahou. and drousias koninow, psinow. cats. n 'tekh osochivshe tako tvoryahou”(NPL, 113v.).

The fact that the townspeople began to eat cats shows that they have no other food left. This terrible mention (probably the oldest in written sources) dates back to the middle of the 13th century, when the text of the chronicle was written. In general, cat meat was considered unclean, and eating it, according to medieval scribes, was a sign of savagery. So, in the Laurentian Chronicle, you can find the following description of the wicked tribe: “I will defile everybody. mosquitoes and flies. kotky (this form of the word was used along with the familiar to us "cat" - approx. Ed.), snake. and I will not bury the dead”(LL 1377, 85 a (1096)).

Fact number 3: cats in Russia lived in cities and were smaller than their modern counterparts

The seals of Ancient Rus were city dwellers. The remains of their bones were found by archaeologists in Kiev, Staraya Ryazan, Novgorod, Tver, Yaroslavl, Smolensk [1] and other cities. Researchers believe that these were rather small animals: the average height at the withers did not exceed 30 cm, and ancient Russian cats weighed no more than 4 kg [2]. Although there were exceptions: the heel bone of a real giant was found at the Troitsky excavation site in Novgorod. Its size is larger than average, not only for a domestic cat, but also for a wild one. Where the giant cat came from in the city, one can only guess. Perhaps it is still a wild cat, hunted by Novgorodians, perhaps a domestic cat, donated or brought by foreign merchants.

There is no clarity about what breeds of cats lived in Ancient Russia. Firstly, according to the researchers, it cannot be argued that in the Middle Ages, in general, someone was specially engaged in the selection and breeding of these animals [3]. Secondly, it is impossible to judge about such important characteristics of the breed as the color and density of the fur, temperament, the ability to catch mice, by the osteological, i.e., bone material (and only it is preserved). Most likely, seals in medieval Russian cities lived almost independently and obtained their own food. And no delicacies for you from a kind owner and periodic trips to the veterinarian. A cat's life was filled with hunger and danger - many animals died (or died) at a young age. Judging by the traces on the bones, some cats were skinned after death [4] - even a dead animal could be used on the farm. It turns out that the owners were pragmatic towards their pets and did not care too much about them. The following fact looks all the more surprising.

Fact number 4: in the XIV century, seals were valued several times more expensive than cows and on a par with dogs

The so-called Metropolitan Justice, a legal monument of the 14th-15th centuries, lists the following fines for theft:

“… for a cat 3 hryvnia, for a dog 3 hryvnia, for a mare 60 kun, for an ox 3 hryvnia, for a cow 40 kun, for a third of 30 kun, for a lonshchina half a hryvnia, for a body 5 kun, for a boran leg, for a pig of a nail, for a sheep 5 kun, for a stallion a hryvnia, for a foal 6 nails”[5].

If we consider the kuna equal to 1/50 hryvnia [6], then 3 hryvnia = 150 kuna, which is almost 4 times more than was demanded for a cow. Even if we take the earlier "rate" of the XI century - 3 hryvnia = 75 kuna, then this amount is almost 2 times more than the fine for a cow. Surprisingly, the cat was valued as highly as the dog and the ox, much more closely involved in the human economy. Such a fine looks all the more strange if we take into account our assumption that cats survived in ancient Russian cities on their own, were "courtyard". Maybe some special purebred cats lived with the representatives of the church? The source says nothing about this.

Fact number 5: cats did not save Russia from the plague

Contrary to popular belief, which can often be found now on the Internet, the plague epidemic in Russia, where cats were supposedly welcomed, raged no less than in Western Europe, where the cat was indeed sometimes considered a companion of the devil and witches. Completing its "tour" in Europe, the great epidemic of the XIV century swept Russia in 1352. In 1353 the Grand Duke of Moscow Simeon Ioannovich the Proud and his two young sons died. The population of Moscow has significantly decreased, the Pskovites did not have time to bury the dead, and in Glukhovo, according to the chronicler [7], no one survived at all. Alas, neither cats nor the entire medical profession of the Middle Ages provided any protection against the pandemic that overtook the world.

Fact # 6: A cat is not always a cozy pet animal, sometimes it can be very dangerous

In the "Solikamsk Chronicler" you can find a story about a strange incident that happened in the Verkhtagil prison (a settlement on the Tagil River in the modern Sverdlovsk region) at the end of the 16th century:

“And the governor in it was Ryuma Yazykov from Moscow. And the greater Kazan cat was brought with him to the commander's tovo. And still de evo kept Ryuma by his side. And that cat is his throat asleep, and it stings to death in that town … "[8]

So what happened to the unfortunate Ryuma Yazykov? What size should a Kazan cat reach in order to gnaw a person's throat? Let's not forget that before his appointment, Ryuma managed to serve in the rifle troops, and, no doubt, he knew how to fight very well. According to one of the versions [9], the jungle cat, a large carnivorous animal, whose weight can reach 12 kilograms, is called the "Kazan cat" in the annals. Jungle cats live in the lower reaches of the Volga, where one of them could theoretically be caught and sold to an unlucky voivode. What provoked the cat's attack on a person - lack of food, mistreatment, or simply the wild disposition of an incompletely domesticated animal - we can only guess.

According to another version, a representative of a special breed of domestic cats - Kazan mouse-catchers - is guilty of the death of Ryuma. The breed has not survived to this day. According to some reports, these were large animals with a round head, wide muzzle, strong neck and short tail. Kazan cats are well known in connection with the activities of the "daughter of Petrova" Empress Elizabeth, who issued the famous decree on the expulsion of cats to the courtyard to fight the mice that have bred in the Winter Palace. This is how the tradition that still exists today to keep cats in the Hermitage to protect works of art arose. The story is yet to come about the role Kazan cats played in Russian folklore of the 17th-18th centuries.

Fact number 7: the first Russian cat, the image of which we have survived, lived in the palace

"The original portrait of the cat of the Grand Duke of Muscovy" is the name of the print by the Czech artist Vaclav Hollar, dated 1663. Checking the chronology, we can conclude that we are dealing with the cat of Alexei Mikhailovich "Quiet", Father Peter I. This king, in general, was very fond of animals and hunting birds, which he kept in large numbers in his country residence Izmailovo. Hollard's engraving is now kept in the National Library of France. Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about the circumstances of its creation. It was suggested that the image was made by the artist who accompanied the Austrian Baron Augustine Meyerberg on his trip to Russia, and that Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich himself was depicted in the form of a cat on the print, but these hypotheses were not confirmed.

Fact # 8: the cat is the protagonist of the most popular folk picture

In point 6 we have already talked about the Kazan cats. Let's look at them now not as skillful mouse-makers and dangerous murderers, but as heroes of Russian (and not only) folklore. Historian Sait Fyarizovich Faizov believes that the prototype of the legend of the Kazan cat arose in the middle of the 16th century:

“… the Cat of the Kazan Tsar (Khan) from the Mari legend“How the Mari went over to the side of Moscow”, which tells about the siege of the Kazan Kremlin in 1552 by the troops of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, is the closest to the hero of the lubok. The court cat from this legend managed to overhear how the Mari kings Yiland and Akparsvede, who were besieging the fortress, would dig a tunnel under the Kremlin wall, and he warned the khan about the danger. Khan, his wife, daughter and a cat secretly went to the Kazanka River, got into a boat and sailed safely from Kazan”[10].

In the second half of the 17th century, luboks appeared in folk culture - painted pictures on wood and metal. One of the most popular themes of popular prints is the funeral of a cat with mice. And on the logs, in the center of the funeral procession, consisting of mice, there is not just a cat, but namely "The cat of Kazan, the mind of Astrakhan, the mind of Siberian …" What does all this mean? Many researchers believe that both the mice and the cat in the picture actually represent someone who cannot be named directly. The popular version claims that the cat buried by the mice is Tsar Peter I, and the authorship of the picture is attributed to the Old Believers, some of whose consents declared the emperor the Antichrist. S. F. Faizov considers the Cat of Kazan as a kind of Tatars in Russian culture, which arose after the conquest of their three kingdoms (Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberian) by Ivan the Terrible. During the 18th century, the plot of the Cat's funeral changed, acquiring an ever-increasing anti-government coloration (for example, mice on a splint began to represent various regions of the Russian Empire, many of them developed “grudges” against the cat, etc.).

If we try to find out the initial meaning of the plot about the funeral of a cat with mice, then its political background should still be relegated to the background. As M. A. Alekseeva notes, in folklore, real life events are rarely transmitted directly. The humor in the popular print about the Kazan Cat is not accusatory. This is not an “evil” laugh at the authorities, but, in the words of the great culturologist Mikhail Bakhtin, “buffoonery”, “laughter at the world, where everyone laughs at everyone, including the“laugh-makers”themselves” [11]. This is how humor, political conflicts and love for cats, which does not leave us to this day, have mixed in the popular consciousness.