What do these data tell us about cats in Anglo-Saxon England? The evidence for cut marks brings us to our first category of a cat—as a source of fur, presumably for clothing. This represents one particular form of engagement with this animal. Just as with modern cats, cat fur would have been available in a range of colours; the ancestors of the domestic cat were striped, and Old Irish sources suggest a variety of different coat colourings, including ginger, grey, white-breasted black cats and the famous white Pangur Bán (Kelly 1997, p. 123). There is no reason to believe this was not also the case for Anglo-Saxon England. As a fairly readily available product, cat skin, as well as leather and sheepskin, could have formed part of the wardrobe of lower-ranking peoples (Veale 2003, p. 4). The act of wearing cat skins was a very different relationship than interacting with, or at least being affected by, the living animal. It is not clear whether each of the cats apparently skinned were also purposefully killed or some were already dead when skinned. At West Stow, at least one of the cats seems to have had its throat slit (as indicated by cut marks on the atlas vertebra), but such evidence is not mentioned in the reports for other sites, although throat slitting may not leave traces on the bones themselves. Alternatively, if the atlas vertebrae are not recovered, this type of killing would be impossible to observe. Another method used to kill cats before making use of their skins is indicated by faunal remains from Viking-Age Odense, Denmark, where cats had their heads wrenched off at the top of the spine, leading to much of the occipital area being removed (Hatting 1990, p. 184). The interaction here was framed by a physical characteristic, or affordance, of the cat—its fur and its presence within a particular environment (mostly towns). Although the examples we have of cat skinning in Anglo-Saxon England do not occur on an industrialised scale, it is possible that some of these examples were conducted by furriers. The fact that some of the sites with evidence of processing cats for fur also have other fur-bearing mammals seems to support this.Footnote 2 Nonetheless, in order to kill the cats, they first had to be captured, which may have been easier if dealing with cats that were used to human company than with feral cats (see below). Any cat could have run away from the advances of these people, which would frustrate the intentions of the person concerned. Even if captured, there is no reason to believe that the cat would be held and killed willingly. We can imagine the cat, like the laboratory rat, hissing and trying to scratch or bite their captor to escape. Sometimes they would have succeeded, many other times they may not have done, as indicated by the skinned cats evident on these settlements.

These human–cat interactions have not ended well for the cats concerned, but in life, cats could have been perceived and treated in a range of different ways. Key factors here are the characteristics of a cat and the effect that their behaviour had on how people perceived them. In modern society, at least, there is often a tendency to see cats as aloof, independent and somewhat indifferent to humans (Alger and Alger 1997, p. 72). Even Isidore of Seville, when describing dogs as being loyal to their masters and requiring human contact, made no such statements in relation to cats (XII.ii.26; Barney et al. 2006, p. 253). Although cats are capable of forming close relationships with people, they also become strongly attached to where they live, often more so than the people they live with. In contrast, dogs tend to form the closest bonds with their owners, followed by other dogs, with their physical surroundings last on their list of priorities (Bradshaw 2013, p. 209). In human–dog relations, humans have come to assume the dominant role within the dog’s social hierarchy (Clutton-Brock 1994, pp. 24–25), which relates to evolutionary history. As Bradshaw (2013, p. 193) points out, whereas dogs have worked with humans and so have needed to develop a good awareness of human body language, cats have worked independently and so required a greater awareness of their environment. This higher level of independence means that there may have been a tendency in Anglo-Saxon England, as in modern society, to see cats as more ‘wild’ than other domesticates (Griffiths et al. 2000, p. 58). One ‘wild’ aspect of behaviour shared by all cats would have been hunting instincts, although some cats would have felt more inclined to hunt than others (depending on the availability of food sources), whilst others could have been better hunters, depending on experiences when younger. Although predatory instincts appear to exist in all cats, practicing the relevant behaviour through activities such as ‘play’, in which the mother presents her young with live prey, can help hone the kittens’ hunting skills (Pokier and Hussey 1982, p. 136). Interaction between kitten, mother and ‘prey’ was therefore important to determining the way a cat was used and perceived by humans and the contribution that they made to fulfilling (or not) a particular social role.

The cat’s part in limiting rodent populations would have contributed to them being tolerated, during the early stages of domestication and throughout much of history, even though scientific studies indicate that their pest control capabilities may have been overemphasised (Kitchener and O’Connor 2010, p. 88). For example, the Laws of Hywel Dda (a tenth century Welsh source) make clear what made desirable qualities in a cat: “…that it do not devour its kittens, and that it have ears, eyes, teeth and claws, and that it be a good mouser” (Richards 1954, p. 92). Similarly, in one Old Irish legal source, a cat’s ability to purr, guard the barn, mill and corn-drying kiln from mice were esteemed qualities (Kelly 1997, p. 122). In both of the cases, the cat had a role to play. If they complied with these ‘wish lists’, then they could be highly valued, but if they did not do all of these things, or if they were a poor hunter, this would have affected how humans perceived them. In other words, being a mouser was not something that a cat was, it was something they did; they performed a particular role and so were labelled in a certain way. If they stopped catching rodents, or did so infrequently, then they were no longer performing such a role, despite human wishes, and might instead be acting out a different category. For those cats classed as people’s property, it is likely that, as in the Late Middle Ages, many householders deliberately refrained from feeding them, to provide incentive to hunt vermin (Thomas 1996, p. 109). The effect of such an omission is also supported by scientific studies, which suggest that while well-fed house cats kill on average 14 small animals (usually rodents) annually, feral cats kill about 1,100 small animals per year (Engels 2001, p. 1). A cat was seen as a mouser due to intra-action between human, cat and rodent; humans create settlements and foodstuffs which enable rodents to thrive, which in turn creates a population for cats to hunt, which they are encouraged to do by the withholding of food. This is a relationship that benefits cat and human. If this was not the case, the cat could choose to leave, for unlike most inanimate objects, they are capable of running away—perhaps even to visit another human, who was willing to feed them. A good mouser might have a high value, such as in the Laws of Hywel Dda where, if owned by the king, they were on a par with a milch sheep with her lamb and wool (Richards 1954, p. 92). This indicates that, while some of the characteristics of cats could be esteemed by people of all social levels, not all cats owned by people were perceived in the same way. The social position of their owner provided them with status connotations that other animals of the same species did not necessarily possess. This was not just a cat; they were the king’s cat, a further category within the broader designation of this animal.

It is also quite possible that cats kept as mousers were largely left to their own devices and tasks, with little human interaction. However, the same animal that acted as mouser could, at other times, or as with other cats, have fulfilled the role of a companion animal. It is difficult to identify a category of cats as pets in Anglo-Saxon England, such as we today might recognise. The term ‘pet’ has different connotations geographically and temporally, but here the definition adopted is that of ‘…animals… kept primarily for social or emotional reasons rather than for economic purposes’ (Serpell and Paul 1994, p. 129). It has been argued that Christian discomfort with close human–animal relationships would have restricted the popularity of pet-keeping for much of the medieval period (Serpell 1986; Serpell and Paul 1994). It is unclear whether the situation was different in Early-Saxon England, although it is interesting that cats are absent from graves of this period, in contrast to other domestic mammals (Bond and Worley 2006). It would seem that something in the cat’s behaviour led to its exclusion from the funerary arena, which might include its perceived ‘aloofness’ and independence from humans (see above). Nonetheless, there is some evidence from the Anglo-Saxon period, largely from contemporary societies, that close ties of affection could exist between cats and humans. This includes the ninth-century poem Pangur Bán, written by an Irish scholar at the monastery of St Paul in Carinthia, Austria. Here, the monk compares the work he is doing, within the scriptorium, with the work of the cat, at hunting mice. This acts as a useful reminder that functional and companionship uses of animals are not completely separate spheres. In the poem, Pangur the cat provides a useful service by hunting mice: “The job he does every day is the one for which he is fit” (Greene and O’Connor 1967, p. 83). Pangur does not seem to be a pet in the sense that we would recognise, but the fact that he has a name provides further evidence of affection, as naming animals serves to recognise an individual in their own right. Such recognition only develops due to relations that take place between humans and individual animals (Hearne 2007, Ch. 7). Moreover, when living beings are given names, this typically involves an attribution of identity that is different to places and objects (Lindstrøm 2012, pp. 155–156). Old Irish cat names such as Méone, a diminutive meaning ‘little meow’, as well as Cruibne, meaning ‘little paws’ (Kelly 1997, pp. 123–124), suggest a recognition of certain aspects of a particular individual animal’s character or behaviour. As such, these individual cats are set apart from the other, nameless and ownerless, cats. Given the long history of naming at least some animals (Lindstrøm 2012, pp. 155–156), it would seem reasonable to expect that the same was true for Anglo-Saxon England. Not all cats may have been named, but since some of them were, it suggests they were recognised as individuals, perhaps with their own ‘character’, which was highlighted and performed through interactions with humans and perhaps other cats. In this sense, the relationship is a reciprocal one, with the cat’s behaviour affecting humans enough for them to be given a name, which they may then perpetuate by continuing to act in that manner.

Regarding cats as companions, it is also important to remember that this is not only a one-way relationship; the cat benefits, in the form of shelter and warmth, and perhaps they also value the companionship. In addition to becoming more tolerant of other cats and humans as part of the domestication process (discussed above), cat communication also changed. Nicastro’s (2004) study showed that there were clear differences in the mean length and frequencies of domestic cat meows compared with wildcats, with the former being far more pleasant than the latter. This indicates that cats with more human-pleasing meows had a better chance of surviving than others. Moreover, with humans, cats are capable of modifying their meow in terms of pitch and duration, or by combining it with other sounds, to suit the circumstances. They seem to learn how to do this by testing different meows and seeing which work in particular situations, a process by which each cat and owner develop their own individual form of communication (Bradshaw 2013, p. 205). The importance of this connection between human and cat is interesting, given that (in addition to the qualities discussed above), amongst the attractive attributes of a cat within Old Irish laws was their ability to purr; if they were not able to catch vermin, they were worth half the cost, but notably, still had a value (Kelly 1997, p. 122). As cats generally display their pleasure in physical contact by purring (Serpell 1986, p. 106), this suggests a mutual pleasure in each other’s company, and actual physical contact between human and cat. Both parties here are acting together and responding to the actions of each other. The cat may well seek out this interaction by making contact with the person. Purring not only shows the cat’s pleasure, but also provides an incentive for the person to continue stroking the animal. Moreover, cats do not just possess one purr but can vary it according to what they wish to gain from a person. For example, research by McComb et al. (2009) demonstrated that, when cats are seeking to solicit food from humans, they adopt a low-pitch purr which contains a high frequency element evocative of a cry or meow. They appear to be taking advantage of mammalian sensitivity to cries of this nature, including those made by human infants, the frequency of which are comparable to the cat’s solicitation purr. In doing this, cats appear to draw upon sounds made when dependent on their mother, thus applying its actions with its own species to a human owner. Again, we have an example here of a cat inducing humans to act, rather than the other way round. Whilst the cat may not be exactly aware of the cause of its purr, they will no doubt learn that such a sound can result in food. Alternatively, they might not be fed, but what is important is that here the animal is clearly not a passive entity. The cat may accompany purring with kneading, especially on soft, warm surfaces, such as a person’s lap or clothes, an action that stems from kittens kneading their mothers to stimulate milk flow. As a great degree of a cat’s social actions seem to develop from mother–kitten interaction (Bradshaw 2013, p. 208), in this context, humans become almost a surrogate mother. Whilst human and cat may not realise the origin of such behaviour, the actions of stroking, kneading and so on could have resulted in bonding between them.

One wonders whether strategies such these were adopted by one of the cats at Mid–Late Saxon Bishopstone. Isotopic data from one of three cat ABGs sampled showed that this animal had a strong marine component in its diet, estimated to be somewhere between 30 % and 50 %. This is in contrast to the other cats, which had values within the normal range for a largely carnivorous animal, as well as the human remains from the same settlement, which are otherwise accommodated within the normal terrestrial range (Marshall et al. 2010). This dichotomy is difficult to explain, as prior to ad 1000, the consumption of marine fish was largely an elite affair (Barrett et al. 2004). Although this individual cat feasibly acquired this signature due to scavenging fish from middens, stable isotopes only provide an individual’s average diet over long time spans and cannot detect occasional consumption of certain foods (Müldner and Richards 2006, p. 229). Accordingly, this cat would have had to be preferentially eating fish on a regular basis, and in large amounts, for such a strong signature to occur. This suggests that this individual was being deliberately fed by someone, or a group of people, living at the site. Given that, as noted above, humans may have had little direct involvement in the feeding of mousers in order to encourage greater pest control, the fact that one cat was probably deliberately fed suggests different treatment than other cats at the site, possibly being a favoured pet. Moreover, this animal was receiving even better treatment than many of the humans living at the site. In some ways, as with the king’s cat in the Laws of Hywel Dda, the performance between human(s) and cat here transcends the position accorded to other cats at this time; did this particular cat belong to an elite member living at the site? As noted above, the ways in which cats can engage with humans could have played an important role in the development of positive attitudes towards them. However, from the zooarchaeological remains themselves, it is very difficult to identify animals which were well treated in life. Pathological evidence, as cited above, can suggest instances where cats were ill-treated, but it is difficult to see things the other way around. This is because we would not necessarily be able to spot prized cats in the archaeological record, as disposing of their carcasses along with waste does not necessarily indicate that they were disliked in life (O’Connor 1992, p. 112). As noted above, the relationship to a cat is likely to have differed significantly, depending on whether dealing with a live cat, a cat carcass, a cat skin and so on. This is because the capacity to interact with people is removed when a cat is no longer alive. In addition, if, as was the case in Late Saxon England, animals were not seen as having souls (Griffiths 2003, p.149), we should not necessarily expect cats to be buried as a human would have been.

Even if a cat was nominally owned by someone, their lifestyle could in fact have shared a lot of similarities with ‘feral’ cats. These were animals owned by no one but which, unlike wildcats, lived in close proximity to human settlements. Amongst feral cats, there would be differences in the extent to which they interact with humans, ranging from those living in close proximity to humans, to groups living entirely apart from people, but which were still dependent on waste produced by settlements and the vermin attracted to such sites (Griffiths et al. 2000, p. 58). Given the greater concentration of people living in urban centres and the resultant higher accumulations of waste compared with rural sites, feral cats may have been a particular issue for those living in towns. Although comparable modern data for feral cat mortality are lacking, a high proportion of young cats, as discussed above, would be in line with a feral population of largely uncared-for animals, suffering from food shortages, natural mortality and accidents, rather than a group of treasured pets (Kitchener and O’Connor 2010, p. 93). Whilst feral cats may have been a nuisance at times, they were likely viewed as useful, given their potential for controlling rodent populations. Even so, there are clear examples of cats acting in ways which conflicted with human desires. In some cases, the cat may be involved in the ‘theft’ of food. Irish law codes from the seventh to eighth centuries mention the recompense a cat’s owner must pay to another human if their animal had stolen their food (Kelly 1997, p. 145). Equally, in a situation familiar today, cats could defecate in unacceptable places, such as on the rushes of a floor. This was also dealt with under seventh to eighth century Irish law, with the cat owner having to compensate the landowner (Kelly 1997, p. 144). When cats urinate or defecate indoors, the main causes are that they feel anxiety and fear, usually over territorial invasion by other cats (Bradshaw 2013, p. 155–156). Given the larger numbers of cats in towns and the subsequently smaller territories available to individual cats, compared with rural areas, one wonders whether this may have been a particular issue for urban dwellers, perhaps playing a factor in how they were treated there. Another, possibly more common, problem could have been urine spraying by males, which they carry out as a means of advertising their success to females (females also spray, but rarely) and possibly to mark territory (Bradshaw and Cameron-Beaumont 2000, p. 69). This may have occurred inside or outside buildings, and the urine itself is especially pungent and unpleasant to humans, a major reason why people today usually have their male cats neutered. However, we have no evidence for such procedures being conducted in Anglo-Saxon England, and we are thus likely only dealing with male and female cats.

That male and female animal species, including cats, usually behave differently in many ways is another reason why we must make allowances for cats having individual characteristics and behaviours. Old English distinguishes between catt for males and catte for females, so that the distinction between the two appears to have been made by people. On their basic appearance, it may not have been easy to distinguish between males and females, unless one was stood next to the other, as males are generally larger than females. Variance in size difference may, however, exist between different populations of cats (O’Connor 2007b). Sexual difference could have been more readily apparent through their behaviour, so that, to some extent, male cats were seen to be those acting, or performing, in the manner of a typical male cat. Whilst both sexes may adapt how they act, depending on the situation, male cats tend to play little or no part in raising kittens and also tend to be more solitary than females. They are also known for their aggression against one another which, coupled with urine marking and their tendency to wander further than females (Deag et al. 2000), potentially made them less likely to form close relationships with people (although Pangur Bán may have been an exception to this). Female cats are much more likely to co-operate with each other, especially when this involves females from the same family. When feral cat colonies occur around sources of food, these are overwhelmingly made up of female cats, which are almost always related to each other. If food resources are large enough, the colonies may include unrelated females, but females from different families tend not to co-operate (Bradshaw 2013, pp. 164–166).

In addition to sex, the age of a cat could also have affected its performativity. The ability to grow and visibly age highlights another area where animals differ from objects. This includes growth in size, but also changes in morphology, such as the texture/patterning of their fur (Reed 1994, p. 118). Like humans, animals also act differently in their youth compared to their behaviour in adulthood. Whilst all cats potentially engage in playful behaviour, kittens are known to be especially playful. As noted above, play is an activity that prepares kittens for hunting, but also for socialising with other cats, as well as humans (Bradshaw 2013, Ch. 4). Interacting with kittens in this way could have been amusing for people in the past, as many people find it today and could have been important in forming attitudes towards this species. This may have been particularly so with human children as they too, like other animals, need to be socialised into particular ways of acting, whether with humans or animals (Birke et al. 2004: 175). Changes in cat behaviour as they become older may affect how people interact with them in life and, perhaps, in death. It is notable that all cat remains from Mid–Late Saxon Bishopstone with cut marks were young animals, indicating a preference for their fur, as opposed to that of older animals (Poole 2010). This seems to be the case with other sites of the period, perhaps because young cat fur was softer. Alternatively, this exploitation may have been somewhat opportunistic, with young cats killed in a bid to control feline population size, but with fur subsequently removed. Notably, at Bishopstone, there were clear differences in the ages of disarticulated and articulated remains. Of the disarticulated cat bones, 50 % of the latest fusing elements were fused, yet only one of the cat ABGs was a fully mature animal. For the remainder of cat ABGs with fusion data, one was foetal/neonatal; six were less than 7 months old whereas five were between 7 months and 1 year old. This raises the possibility of cats being perceived and treated differently, depending on their age. It suggests that younger cats were purposefully targeted and killed, possibly because they were viewed as more useful dead than alive. These cats tended to be deposited fairly quickly, whereas older cats were left exposed for some period of time, so that their bodies decomposed and became disarticulated.

The treatment of cats at Bishopstone mirrors that observed on urban sites of the Late Saxon period, suggesting similarities in the behaviour towards cats across urban and rural sites. According to McCormick and Murray (McCormick 1988; McCormick and Murray 2007), evidence from Ireland indicates an urban/rural dichotomy regarding how cats were perceived and treated in the later Early Christian period there (tenth to eleventh century ad). Based on the small sample of sites for which data was available, cats on rural sites of this period seem to have been larger (because they were better cared for and had less competition) and lived longer than their urban counterparts. Cat bones with skinning marks were also very rare on rural sites but commonly found on urban sites. These factors, it was suggested, indicate commercial exploitation of cat skins in towns and a view of cats as commodities, in contrast to rural settlements, where they were treated exclusively as pets (McCormick 1988, pp. 223–224; McCormick and Murray 2007, p. 116). Generally speaking, there are broad similarities between cat treatment on urban and rural sites in England and Ireland during the same period. This is particularly so regarding the high proportion of young cats on urban sites and the greater frequency of skinning marks on cat bones in towns. Additionally, 3 to 4 instances of cat pathology (all trauma-related) are from towns. This can be contextualised within the broader moves in Anglo-Saxon society towards urban-based craft specialisation, which affected how town dwellers interacted with the animate world, compared with rural dwellers, as well as the increasing commercialisation of transactions involving animals (Poole 2013b). However, the link between the size of a cat and the urban/rural character of a site does not seem to hold for Anglo-Saxon England, as cat size seems to vary even between different urban sites, including Late Saxon urban York and Lincoln (O’Connor 2007b). Additionally, a cat’s genetic origin will also have played a part in its final size. At Bishopstone, we see more exploitative attitudes towards many cats (but certainly not all, as shown by our well-fed example) than is evident at other rurally located sites of the period. Although occupying a rural setting, Bishopstone was densely occupied, and archaeobotanical evidence indicates that refuse accumulated on the surface, available to scavengers such as cats, before some of it was buried in pits (Ballantyne 2010). The presence of other craft activities being carried out on the site may have created a view of many cats as commodities, to be exploited for their fur. This would be comparable to the rural Irish site of Knowth, where it is only in a tenth to eleventh century phase that skinned cat bones are evident, suggested to represent industrial trading at the site (McCormick and Murray 2007, p. 50). Similar interpretations were proposed for skinning evidence from a post-ad 1000 phase at Whithorn, south-west Scotland (McCormick and Murphy 1997, p. 612). Thus, Bishopstone shared some perceptions of cats evident amongst the urban populace, indicating that, despite broad differences, the urban/rural divide was not absolute. What this evidence shows is that, whilst the activities and lifestyles carried out on a settlement could affect human perceptions of cats (as with other animals; Poole 2013b), differences in individual temperaments of cats, what people used them for, the level of interaction and so on could all have generated varying categorisations, even on an intra-site basis. The cat, therefore, could fulfil a range of rules and be seen in many different ways, yet far from being passive entities, they were key performers in the process.