Cats.

Just heard it on the radio. People didn’t consider owning pet cats until the nineteenth century, and at first it was a fairly niche thing to do — a lot of young writers, poets, painters would keep cats in their houses, as cats were considered artsy. Then the custom spread to London, and New York where the fad really took off. Everyone and their uncle had a cat.

I think it’s surprising to me because I’ve learned about pet cats being quite popular in the ancient times, in Egypt if my memory doesn’t fail me. If so, it’s an interesting example of the cyclical nature of things.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 19:23 and is filed under changes/cyclical, discovery, retrospective. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.