Upcoming panel at Kalamazoo Medieval Studies Congress

[ellid]

Thursday 7:30 p.m. Session 157 (Schneider 1280)
Vair, Able, Phoenix, and Kitty-Cat: Desire and Reality in Medieval Fur Fashions


Kitty-Cat??????

Comments

Medieval Dandies Know...

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

Cat--nothing finer for lining gloves :->

Re: Medieval Dandies Know...

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I've been threatening to make Malfoy my next bathmat for quite some time.

[toyniffler.livejournal.com]

Fluffy longhaired cats make excellent fur collars! :D

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Makes me glad the Triple Felinoid are all short hairs...

[toyniffler.livejournal.com]

Admittedly you dont have to remove the actual cat from the fur for that to work, though the living fur collar is a bit troublesome and may try to steal your dinner! ;)

There is a theory (totally unsubstansiated) floating about the SCA that the reason the vikings (aledgedly)kept Norwegian forest cats (or similar longhaired critters) is that the cat skins were pretty (especially the marmalade ones)and made fine fur collars, lining and trim! It's an interesting theory at least!

In later period the catskins were sought after as a cheap source of fur, at least here in the snowy north. Cat fur is ridiculously warm.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Then there's the famous Lacon cat-rat ranch hoax of the 1870s, which was still taken seriously as late as 1940 or thereabouts:

""Glorious Opportunity to Get Rich--We are starting a cat ranch in Lacon with 100,000 cats. Each cat will average 12 kittens a year. The cat skins will sell for 30 cents each. One hundred men can skin 5,000 cats a day. We figure a daily net profit of over $10,000. Now what shall we feed the cats? We will start a rat ranch next door with 1,000,000 rats. The rats will breed 12 times faster than the cats. So we will have four rats to feed each day to each cat. Now what shall we feed the rats? We will feed the rats the carcasses of the cats after they have been skinned. Now Get This! We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats and get the cat skins for nothing."

[danabren.livejournal.com]

Phoenix??

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Arizona?

[danabren.livejournal.com]

It included "Phoenix" with the cat.