The Great Cat Massacre

Throughout my studying of French history, I have read about some of the highest pinnacles that our species has reached; Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, where men of different backgrounds, ideologies, and classes joined together to oppose tyranny and forge a more equal world, the works of the Enlightenment, which prevailed reason over superstition, the impassioned painting of David amidst the chaos of revolution, and the countless scientific advances that ensured a safer world for future generations.  But yet, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction meant to knock humanity down a peg and I am pretty sure that the Great Cat Massacre of the late 1730’s cancels out the development of insulin.

Though the exact causes of this event are, as they should be with something so strange, uncertain, we do know some of the specifics.  In the 1730’s the printing business largely encompassed the professions of those on the rue Saint-Séverin, and incidentally it was all the rage for printers to own multitudes of cats, with one of the more wealthy printmakers apparently having had portraits painted of his twenty-five felines.  One night disgruntled workers decided that enough was enough and rounded up the cats, massacring dozens with lead pipes and subsequently, deciding that hammering cats wasn’t theatrical enough, put on a mock trial for the kittens.  Amongst the mob, a hangman, confessor, guards, and judge were named.  A miniature gallows was erected, which must have been adorable, and the cats were hanged for witchcraft.  Such is the darkness that lies in men’s hearts.

Historian Robert Darnton attempted to make sense of this cat-astrophe in his book “The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History,” observing how modern commentators on the subject tend to be stymied by the fact that this cat massacre was done for amusement and was a source of hilarity amongst the workers for some time to come.  Nicolas Contat, an apprentice who took part in the kitty killings and the Michael Vick of the Ancien Régime, wrote “The printers delight in the disorder; they are beside themselves with joy.  What a splendid subject for their laughter, for a belle copie! They will amuse themselves with it for a long time.”  Though bludgeoning and hanging cats has never really been my thing (yet), I can be sympathetic to the extent that this act symbolically reversed the class hierarchy for a night.  When a wife of one of the printmakers saw what was done to her cat, she reportedly exclaimed “These wicked men can’t kill the masters, so they have killed my pussy!”  The Carnivalesque appeal must have been poignant to the workers, underfed and overworked by their masters who instead gave their best meat to their beloved cats.  Thus, the eighteenth century’s greatest social commentary comes not from Rousseau, not from Voltaire, but from the Great Cat Massacre.