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Apparently Medieval People Found Cats Licking Their Butts Fascinating And Here Are 14 Pics As Proof
Our fondness for funny cats and their idolization in popular culture far precedes the internet - humans have been lovingly sharing cat drawings since the days of Ancient Egypt. Usually, we prefer to admire cats being cute, funny, or majestic. However, there appears to be one period in human history when we enjoyed creating images of them doing something else entirely - licking their butts.
Perhaps there was a certain sense of humor in the medieval art that encouraged this trend. Perhaps it was an admiration of the way cats calmly kept themselves clean in a brutal time of violence, squalor, and disease. Or perhaps the cat paintings are some secret Da Vinci code giving hints as to the location of the Holy Grail.
Either way, this weird art is good for a laugh in our day and age. This hilarious quirk of medieval paintings was first noticed on the Tumblr Discarding Images, and it has been baffling people ever since.
Scroll down below to check out the best of medieval cats licking their butts below, and let us know what you think in the comments!
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#1
Give me a beagle any day... 6 years ago
Why does this once look like that cat was sketched on much later by someone else? And why is jesus so damn stoned ? That man is high--look at his eyes!
Pretty Pangolin 6 years ago
There also appear to be bear claws sticking out of the blue scroll at top.
Cats have been our faithful friends for a long time, well before even medieval times. According to Smithsonian.com, it has taken some time to piece together the riddle of cats and their domestication; they have come to a tentative conclusion that we have lived side-by-side with them for around 12,000 years.
“Some clues first came from the island of Cyprus in 1983, when archaeologists found a cat’s jawbone dating back 8,000 years, they write. “Since it seemed highly unlikely that humans would have brought wild cats over to the island (a spitting, scratching, panic-stricken wild feline would have been the last kind of boat companion they would have wanted), the finding suggested that domestication occurred before 8,000 years ago.”
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#2
Loki’s Lil Butter Knife 6 years ago
Who knew that our ancestors were making “I can has cheeseburger” cat memes long before the invention of the Internet. I suppose even monks got bored...
Paul K. Johnson 6 years ago
"Paint twenty copies of this painting and pass them to ten friends or you'll have seven years of bad luck."
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Sherri Steinert-Brown 6 years ago
That is definitely not the butt on this one it looks like a wound but they made it the same color as the flower to keep the flow going
#3
“In 2004, the unearthing of an even older site at Cyprus, in which a cat had been deliberately buried with a human, made it even more certain that the island’s ancient cats were domesticated and pushed the domestication date back at least another 1,500 years.”
#4
#5
More recently, a study published in the research journal Science secured more pieces in the cat-domestication puzzle based on genetic analyses. “All domestic cats,” the authors declared, “descended from a Middle Eastern wildcat, Felis sylvestris, which literally means “cat of the woods.”
Cats were first domesticated in the Near East, and some of the study authors speculate that the process began up to 12,000 years ago.
#6
Sherri Steinert-Brown 6 years ago
The Gene Simmons of butt licking. Not sure I slept his last name right but you get the jest
#7
Kathy Baylis 6 years ago
Why does the cat have 5 o’clock shadow? On a somewhat human-looking face?
Sandra DeRosia 6 years ago
Wow I was going to try to sleep but not now because I'm going to have nightmares. The face on this cat is so wrong. 🤣
Grace Robertson 6 years ago
why does the cat have an human nose? It looks like a man with five o clock shadow and he isn't happy with the stank coming off.
So there you have it. We have lived together with our feline friends for millennia, yet they still act like they hardly know us half of the time!
#8
Give me a beagle any day... 6 years ago
Did cats really look so different back then? Half of these cats in these photos so far look like foxes, or ferrets, or badgers, but NOT like cats! Is it just me???
troufaki13 6 years ago
Well, to be fair, even humans don't look like humans in those drawings
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#9
#10
Grace Robertson 6 years ago
so you're telling me that some cats like eating rats, some like birds and some like eating their own a$$? Oh that's funny!
Load More Replies... Pretty Pangolin 6 years ago
What is the object at right - a lumpy bed? Or a rack of bread? This seems to be a depiction of 'cats at home.'
#12
Brent Kaufman 6 years ago (edited)
"Hey Moe, look what I can do!" What's up with the fire bellows?
#13
AnnieLaurie Burke 6 years ago
And one of the ones that looks more or less like a cat,
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#14
Catlady6000 6 years ago
Wonder if this was some sort of trademark? There's another one in this series that is clearly a very bad, color copy
Kat Khatib 6 years ago
Why so many Cats on bellows anyhoo?? Are they blowin' out their flames??
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What do you think ?
Demonic cow 6 years ago (edited)
Yep. You can go from reading about people complaining about something, to animal pics, to medieval cat butts.
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Edgar Rops 6 years ago
That is rather tame by medieval illuminator's standards. What would you say about a nun, picking... certain male parts of a tree.
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Phil Boswell 6 years ago
To be honest, a lot of these you can only tell it's supposed to be a cat *because* it's licking its bum ;-)
Douglas Campbell 6 years ago
This is a symbolic reference to the 'osculum infame,' meant to signify the presence of the devil. Compendium...367b13.jpg 
fruit_panda 6 years ago
These are called marginalia, because they inhabit the margins of medieval manuscripts. There are all sorts of bizarre things beyond just cats. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-marginalia-books-doodles.amp
Demonic cow 6 years ago (edited)
Yep. You can go from reading about people complaining about something, to animal pics, to medieval cat butts.
Load More Replies... Edgar Rops 6 years ago
That is rather tame by medieval illuminator's standards. What would you say about a nun, picking... certain male parts of a tree.
Load More Replies... Phil Boswell 6 years ago
To be honest, a lot of these you can only tell it's supposed to be a cat *because* it's licking its bum ;-)
Douglas Campbell 6 years ago
This is a symbolic reference to the 'osculum infame,' meant to signify the presence of the devil. Compendium...367b13.jpg
fruit_panda 6 years ago
These are called marginalia, because they inhabit the margins of medieval manuscripts. There are all sorts of bizarre things beyond just cats. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-marginalia-books-doodles.amp
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