The cat salesman II

Don’t use your time machine yet! There’s some more stuff I need to say! This chapter was so long that I needed to split it into multiple parts! Uhh, lets continue!

The graph

I’ve constructed a graph for you showing the loop of the cat salesman. This graph summarizes what I want to say pretty well? It all boils down to:

But for all of you intricacy-addicts out there, this is the full graph explaining all of the intricacies of being a cat salesman:

The cat loop

Red = Starting point, Blue = Prerequisites, Yellow = Loop component, Green = External event/purchase

If you want to become an expert cat salesman, do this and you’ll be there in no time! It is possible that you die while moving from Gwynedd to Dyfed but eh, whatever! YOLO.

Medieval purrsuits

Oh, so you haven’t acquired a time machine yet. Well, that’s okay! There exists a really good, funny and entertaining game about becoming a cat salesman in medieval Wales. Play it on itchio here, it’s good. You won’t regret it.

When should you profit?

I made a rough estimation on how many cats you should get before selling n - 2 of them for 4 * (n - 2) ceiniog, but scientifically, when should you profit? How many geese and/or cats can you transport?

A cat, on average at 2+ years of age is supposed to weigh around 4kg. A goose on average weighs 3.5kg. Your average human male’s upper limit in how many kilograms he can carry is 26kg and 16kg for a woman. Calculating the average weight a human can carry proves to be easy:

(26 + 16) / 2 = 21

So your average human can carry 21kg of weight. Using this, we can calculate how many cats and/or geese a human can carry using:

21 / 4 = 5.25
21 / 3.5 = 6

Since we shouldn’t cut kittens into four pieces, the upper limit of cats for a human to carry would be 5 cats. This means that, without equipment, we can trade for 4 geese, to begin with:

1 cat -> 4 geese
4 geese -> 2 cat

So we can barely carry 4 geese and now we’re about to carry 8. At this point it’s over. To successfully trade cats in this day and age you would need some starting capital of… Well, I don’t know. You’d need enough starting capital (money-capital, to be exact) to be able to invest in a horse and a carriage, but if you’re a farmer in these ages you probably have all of these things already. If not, you need starting money capital. A good way to acquire this would be by selling your assets. It’s not like you’re going to live on your farm anymore! You’re going to be a travelling soul! With this, you need to invest in a carriage to be able to carry your capital and product.

Next chapter: The cat salesman III

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