Cat products

A cat. Does it produce any products? Does it produce anything of value? Is it just a mouse-catching machine? Well, Dyfed believes that a cat produces one worthless product: milk.

Cat milk

I am disgusted and appalled. But it seems like Dyfed also believes that; it specifically says that cat milk is a worthless product, but the way they phrase it is funny as hell. In the laws, they specify that cats produce a product known as “Worthless Milk”. They share this property with the female dog and the female horse. I hate knowing that there once was a law in medieval Wales that mentioned worthless cat milk.

Cats in general

Come to think of it, aren’t cats in general pretty… Useless? Besides catching mice, of course, they don’t really do anything? You don’t eat them (I hope) and you don’t drink their milk. You can’t possibly acquire any product from them! Their bodies are to small, hence the fur can’t make a coat, everything about them is pure uselessness! Besides catching mice, their only use is being cute, and I can tell you, these medieval people did not see cats as cute! This is a REAL painting made by a REAL person in the middle ages:

A REAL painting. From the middle ages. A REAL painting. Well, enough of that, let’s continue to ramble about other middle-age-wales-cat-law shenanigans!

Cats as products

Once you owned a cat, how did that go? Where there any laws about the ownership of cats after they (as products and commodities) have been purchased? Yes there were, are you stupid? Gwynedd and Dyfed specifically. They have laws specifying how a married couple should divide ownership of furniture. There is – as everyone knows – a very well known piece of furniture known as a cat. Yes, Gwynedd and Dyfed classify a cat as a piece of furniture, ignore it. If the couple only owned one cat, the husband would get it. But, if the couple owned more than one cat, the husband would get one while the wife would get the rest of the cats. In a household with 5 cats, cats A-E for example, the husband would own A, while the wife would own B, C, D and E. And if these people died without an heir, their goods would be taken by the state and predominantly the king. The poor person chosen to sort these goods out, the rhingyll, would get some of the riches though. This includes cats. They would get all of them, in fact. This mean that under a very specific chain of events you could get rich of being a rhingyll. See the following tree of events:

• Couple a owns x cats.
• Couple a dies without heir?
  • No?
    • End of tree. You don’t acquire cats
  • Yes?
    • x > 1?
      • No?
        • x = 1?
          • No?
            • End of tree. Not enough cats.
          • Yes?
            • Purchase cat?
              • No?
                • End of tree. Not enough cats.
              • Yes?
                • Become a cat salesman and exploit a trick in the system (more on that later).
      • Yes?
        • Become a cat salesman and exploit a trick in the system (more on that later).

I also simplified it into one labyrinth for you. Think of it like those choice labyrinths you see sometimes. Eh, I’ll just show you:

Next chapter: Cat crime

Sources:

• Youtube (Cambrian Chronicles) - Medieval cat laws
• Hubpages - The cat legislation of the medieval king “Hywel the Good”