Medieval Cats is a fun little romp through cat history. This would make a great coffee table book or conversation starter. Cat lovers will enjoy, and will probably pick up some new fun facts along the way!

A fun quick read. This book was an eclectic mix between medieval history invovling cats, assorted cat facts, and medieval art with meme like jokes. As a cat lover, it was sometimes hard to read through some of the sadder cat history, but an interesting read none the less.

Thank you, NetGalley and Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press | Ten Speed Press for this ARC for review. This little book is hilarious!! It is full of funny cat pictures (why did they draw all the cats so weird and crazy looking?! 😂) and stories from Medieval writings and time period. A bunch of sayings and superstitions about cats can be traced back to this time. Cats have always been both loved and annoying.

This is a fun (and funny) book, perfect for cat lovers and fans of medieval art, history, and literature.

This book is a wonderful ode to felines. The book is full of facts and tidbits about cat's such as the origin of the belief that cats have nine lives. The writing is accompanied by images of felines found in medieval text. This image rang from the humours, such as a human riding a cat like a horse, to the bizarre, such as a half cat half snail creature. If you are a cat lover this book is definitely worth your time just for the pictures alone!

This is my first ever review here and I am delighted it’s about a book with cats… medieval ones, no less! 😻This is filled with funny illustrations, even funnier quotes and plenty of jokes about, well, you know who 😽 (“Curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought it back.”)… that said, there are also some sad parts, so be prepared. This is a fast and enjoyable read and as a vet student and cat lover I am thankful for NetGalley for giving me the chance to share my thoughts on this.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7251890716

This book is created by a cat lover for fellow cat enthusiasts. While the pictures from the manuscripts are organized into themed chapters, I found myself more captivated by the medieval cats and the accompanying interesting facts and humorous commentary.

It’s important to note that the text is minimal, so readers shouldn't expect comprehensive information. Instead, the book serves as a delightful collection showcasing various types of cats. I can easily imagine myself browsing through it with a furry friend by my side, admiring the delightful images.

An absolutely delightful, humorous, and informative history of medieval cats, with lots of references from historical sources, and fun cat facts, including revealing the origins of common sayings, like raining cats and dogs.

I learned quite a lot from this book. The short anecdotes were easily digestible and memorable, and the images were extremely interesting having been taken from medieval manuscripts. A few famous names were dropped too, including Isaac Newton, Shakespeare, and Leonardo da Vinci.

This would be an excellent coffee table book or gift for any and every lover of history and cats! Highly recommend!

Thank you to the author and publisher for this Netgalley ARC.

A few years ago I kickstarted some pins based on illustrations of medieval animals, including a pin of a cat cleaning it's backside in a very classy pose! This cute book has lots of other (some classier) examples of illustrations of cats, along with some history, of cats and of the time. It's not serious book, and it's not trying to be (check out the author's name. Not her real name). It's fun and interesting and just informative enough. This would make a good coffee table book, or a gift for that cat lover who has everything.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an E-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A must-have for any cat lover! Medieval Cats is a compilation of anecdotes, poems and art work and more from the middle ages. I especially enjoyed the art work - much of it anthropomorphizing cats. This book will provide hours of entertainment!

Published by Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press and available March 4, 2025, Medieval Cats immediately caught my eye as a medievalist and cat lover. And I really wanted to like this book, but several things hold it back. First and most egregious is its disregard for what the Middle Ages actually is. While the book itself places the Middle Ages between 500 and 1500 CE, which is a good estimate a lot of people use, it then ignores that and includes references to Shakespeare and even Isaac Newton, neither of whom were medieval. The images are properly cited fortunately, but there are no endnotes or other citations (at least in the ARC). I also couldn't find anything about the author (whose name I suspect is a pseudonym) and that bugs me. Overall it's got some good information about cats in the medieval period, but it's also unfocused and falls into the usual "Medieval means anything before the Industrial Revolution" folly so many non-academic things do.

This book could have been so good! It has a fun premise - to blend humour and fact to produce an informative piece made accessible by it’s relatable thematic thread: cats. Some attempt is made and the contemporary quotes on cats begin to draw a picture together but are often left floating - without any connection to each other or the to wider historical context.

However, it falls short. The humour is lighthearted at best and cringy are worst but not hilarious. Pages that should have been taken up by medieval based historical fact and intrigues are instead dedicated to modern or just generic cat facts. Meaning it becomes less a book on the medieval period as told through the lens of pets/animals and more a book just on cats generally. Additionally, the genuine medieval illustrations feel wasted. What could have been an exploration into what we are seeing in these illustrations and what that means just becomes a quick ‘funny’ caption which gives no substance and doesn’t get the reader to pause and appreciate or fully engage with the illustration.

Yes this is just a jokey type book but it’s still fun and great too thumb through,
Any lover of cats really should buy this just for the kicks of it. We have and always will love doodling our little kitties.

This book was honestly really odd. From what I could tell, it was a collection of times cats were mentioned in medieval literature or painted in the artwork of the time. Maybe I’m missing the humor or something. I just didn’t get it I’m afraid. It was not was I was expecting at all.
The paintings were interesting though.

All over the Middle Ages, from the 5th century to the 16th, there are drawings and paintings of cats - often in the margins of the manuscript or at the corner of the religious painting, but there. Some are beautifully realistic, like Da Vinci's drawings, other crude representations, like so many of the monks' attempt to illustrate a cat in bestiary or psalter, while other scholars, illustrating morality tales, would draw hilarious cats as people in anthropomorphized actions or clothes to make a point. There were also many proverbs, sayings, jokes, riddles and exasperated quotes about cats. Together, these pictures and words from the period show how long people have been fascinated by cats.

However, when the author - using the tortured pen name "Cat Nappington" - butts in to make up funny captions or make pithy statements about medieval history, the book is less than captivating.

The primary sources are very cool - but the author could have used a lighter touch bringing them all together.

Cat lovers will love flipping through these pages that are filled with excerpts, funny situations and pictures of cats during the middle ages. Entertaining!

In short, a book of medival cat memes and cat facts. Very enjoyable (tho the printed version is likely better than the digital one), I would have liked more story and facts but don't think that was the point of the book so totally understandable.

Annoyingly bad, but thankfully a quick read (I finished it in under an hour). The organization of this book is nonexistent. This book is so full of nonsense, like joke captions and quotes placed alongside actual historical quotes, that it's difficult to read. There is almost no synthesis, and what little there is is largely incorrect based on mistranslations, a lack of understanding of medieval documents, and general common misconceptions. It's difficult to figure out who the target audience of this book is, let alone what exactly the point of this book is. If one of my college writing students turned this in, I would struggle to give them even a C or a D because it's just random ridiculous information regurgitated in no particular order with absolutely no structure. I'm shocked that Penguin Random House would publish something like this, and even more shocked to learn that the author is a university professor. This book gets one star because there is no option to give it zero.

This is such a cute coffee table type of book! I loved all the fun facts and seeing the different cat depictions!

This book is an absolute delight! It’s a charming compilation of notes, photos, and stories showing how cats have woven themselves into the fabric of Western culture since some of the earliest recorded histories.

Perfect for any cat lover, it’s both informative and heartwarming—a wonderful celebration of our feline friends through time.