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When you look at the rat catchers of the modern era, they prefer dogs to cats for rat hunting.

It's a valid point. Unfortunately, I do not see the original study this article quotes

Pretty confident that everything was seen as a demon by someone in medieval times.

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The fundamental framing of the cold War as democracy or communism that is so common in the west annoys me so much. Its comparing a system of government and an economic system (or rather an economically focussed ideology).

Capitalism vs Marxism is a much better framing for what the cold War was about. That the USSR was a dictatorship and US a democracy is completely incidental to their economic systems.

The thing with Iran isn't that dictatorship beat democracy. On the contrary, Iran is/was pretty democratic.

The trouble is, as seen in the wake of the Arab spring, democracy in a very Conservative Muslim country often does lead to Islamicists rising to power - and much like the hard right in the west, they tend not to be too big on democracy once they use it to secure power.

Iranians we are likely to meet in the west are pretty well off city dwellers. Hence the image of Iranians as absolute vodka swigging party animals.

The rural poor have a very different outlook. Just think about how different life is for rural and urban people in Western countries and multiply it several times over.

Very cool! I worked at the field site with the “vampire “ burials in 2014. There were quite a few people buried with scythes around their neck or torso.

Big baby animal? Didn't try too hard on that unique name.

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Medievalist with PhD here. I have seen no evidence of "mass state sponsored killing of cats." For one thing, "the state" as we would see it in the 21st century simply did not exist in the Middle Ages in most countries, there was no organized body that could have carried out such measures, and royal administrations (the closest one could get to "the state") had other priorities.

This myth is a sloppy modern explanation.

The 37000 year old Mammoth bones in America is interesting

Here is another interesting article that explores the love/hate relationship with cats in the Middle Ages: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1387/cats-in-the-middle-ages/ (Warning: contains graphic descriptions of people torturing cats)

I think people exaggerate how rare pitched battles were. In most major wars in medieval Europe, you see at last one pitched battle. That said pitched battle alone did not necessary decide the war as pitched battle was not war goal on it's own. Given most of the time war goal was control over territory and resources and territory and resources were usually protected by some kind of fortifications, you needed siege to reach your goal. So pitched battles were important as far as they either led to a successful sieges or prevented enemy from successful sieges. There are number of examples of military campaigns and pitched battles that did not result in successful sieges and control over territory/resources. Notorious example are English campaigns in France during Hundred's Years War. English often won major battles, sometimes in spectacular way, but they sometimes failed to transform those victories in to territorial gains and control.

So how would major military campaign of the Medieval era look like in Europe? Feudal lord, for example king would declare war over some (usually territorial claim). He would set up a war goal, usually town or fortification commanding that territory. He would call up to arms his subjects and set a place where troops would gather. This might take few months. Preparations would have been done in advance (could be as much as year or half a year in advance) to gather equipment and supplies (may include ships). Once assembled, leadership would be assigned and march routes planed. Then army would march to it's objective. On the way army would conduct raids and siege any fortifications and settlements that would pose obstacle towards objective and to secure lines of communication and supplies. Once at the objective, siege would begun.

Opposing side in the mean time would start assembling it's own forces, typically with a time lag of few months. If force assembled was deemed large enough to confront the attacker, army would march at the enemy with the goal of either preventing him from reaching his goal or lifting his siege of the objective if he already reached it. If nothing else intervened, armies would meet and fight pitched battle. If attacker lost, war would be over. If attacker won and his force was still strong enough to carry on to the objective, he would proceed with his goal. There was still the chance that he would fail his objective however as he might still have to fight the siege. There was also chance that even after victorious battle, losses would be such, that attacker would not have enough strength to capture the objective, in which case he would fail.

If assembled defending force was not deemed large enough to confront attacker in open battle, it could still try to frustrate attacker's siege of his objective. They could try to de-blockade siege town or fortress, reinforce it, raid enemy rear, set up ambushes, prevent him from foraging effectively or just simply pose threat by been present nearby.

In some instances defender might fail to assemble his force or assemble it on time and attacker might have already taken his goal. If defending side refused to accept such outcome, they may try to mount their own campaign later to recapture lost territory. Sometimes one or more years later.

Thanks to character of feudal mobilization and economy, feudal warfare was extremely indecisive. Meaning it was very hard to defeat enemy decisively on a strategic scale. Forces that could be mobilized at any moment in time were as a rule only fraction of actual military capacity of the country. Large part of feudal levy was immobile and incapable of leaving far from their homes because of the lack or transport and seasonal character of agriculture. And even more mobile part of levy composed of feudal lords, their retinues newer assembled in full when called. Therefore feudal armies were small in size relative to overall military capacity of the country and were restricted in time they could effectively spend on the campaign. Therefore even if such army was defeated in the field, it was always possible to assemble a new one over time. Add to that fact that movement and communications were slow, feudal wars tended to drag on and resemble pendulum: Side A would assemble force and attack side B. Since side B started to assemble it's force later and with a time lag, side A would have initial advantage pushing forward. However over time force of side A would diminish while side B would have assembled it's own force gaining advantage in turn. Rinse and repeat. Therefore large feudal wars tended to go forward and back for years with sides gaining and loosing momentum as they gathered their war resources, spend them, retreated back to recover, gathered their resources again and so on.

Because of above, lot of medieval warfare was actually raiding. In fact some military campaigns had raiding the territory as a goal, rather then capture of that territory. This was to some part also caused by character of motivation of Medieval soldier, for whom war booty was important part of warfare. Over time such raiding could diminish resources of the opposing side and could be more effective then any pitched battles.

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That's not exactly what the article says, though- it tempers the idea that cats in the Middle Ages were only seen as evil, by giving examples where cats were also much loved as pets, but it doesn't claim that it is a myth altogether.

A substantial amount of people were farmers/lived close to nature though. It's just... pet food wasn't a thing, in the best case you might toss some meat leftovers (though I suppose those would mostly go to the dogs and pigs). Cats roamed and are pretty capable of keeping themselves fed when they're healthy. I doubt it's as much a question of people keeping cats than cats staying around sources of easy food (vermin)/warmth/scritches behind their ears. You didn't need to be able to afford cats, they can take care of themselves.

Same as with your pet cat. If it's a freeroam, it'll hunt anyway regardless if you feed it or not. My previous cat was semi-freeroam (couldn't get out the connected backyards) and at one point he took the neighbours' rabbits home. Over a 3 meter/10 foot wall. Mind you, he was well-fed and lacked for nothing. My current is indoors only, she attacks anything on 4 legs on sight. Including the neighbour's German Shepherd. Hunting instinct is big in cats and never went out of them.

My childhood cat (a little calico) used to hunt adult rabbits and snakes. According to my mum, you'd see this rabbit or snake corpse coming up the road with a cat tail just visible behind it. "Look what I caught."

True, but almost no pets back then were treated as we treat them now. I doubt most people could afford pets whose only purpose was to bring comfort.

If treated the same, yes. Cats haven't changed all that much. And they survive well enough on their own as strays that they quickly become a pest when not controlled.

The pilum takes less metal but cannot effectively be used for thrusting. A blade for a thrusting spear takes a similar amount. The short sword is a kind of very short thrusting spear. Compare the Zulu Iklwa: spear or shortsword with a long hilt?

Your cat was probably a spoilt indoor cat, not a barn cat.

Though barn cat's generally don't pick a fight with adult rats, they will eat their young.

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Like only Europe experienced the Black Death ? It’s just another myth to portray medieval times as dark age

It depends, my former cats and friends cats varied from playing with mice to taking on badgers and foxes. The panther owned by my ex bf parents would tackle anything on his territory. My old ginger was big enough to take on rats and even stole next doors canary and brought it into my kitchen to slaughter in the night.

I said vermin..rats, mice, insects, snakes..