Hywel the Good
Before we can cat along and sell our feline friends for profit, we need to know who set up these cat laws and then also; why? This all goes back to a man – a noble – called “Hywel the Good” in our modern English language.
TL;DR
To summarise [Wikipedia]:
Hywel ap Cadell, commonly known as Hywel Dda, which translates to Howel the Good in English, was a Welsh king who ruled the southern Welsh kingdom of Deheubarth and eventually came to rule most of Wales. He became the sole king of Seisyllwg in 920 and shortly thereafter established Deheubarth, and proceeded to gain control over the entire country from Prestatyn to Pembroke. As a grandson of Rhodri Mawr through his father Cadell, Hywel was a member of the Dinefwr branch of the dynasty. He was recorded as King of the Britons in the Annales Cambriæ and the Annals of Ulster.
Deheubarth
Deheubarth was a pretty big kingdom by British-isle standards at the time. It came about after Hywel joined to kingdoms called “Seisyllwg” and “Dyfed” together as one kingdom (which almost has a worse name than Seisyllwg): Deheubarth. Deheubarth is basically where our story starts. There are a lot of different events that happened to expand Deheubarth, but the land stayed pretty much the same except for a few changes.
Cat-law
Hywel the Good was quite honestly pretty good. The laws he passed was seen as having compassion rather than punishment*, plenty of common sense* and recognition of the rights of women*. Hywel the Good knew one thing: cats are very important. In agrarian society such as Wales in the 10th century, cats were very important for catching mice and other such pests. Hywel thought “Well, since cats are such important beings of our society, we need to regulate them and their commodities as well as making sure their well-being is intact.”, and as such, he imposed a bunch of cat laws! This book is about these cat laws.
*For the most part. Yeah, none of these “respectable” kings were truly respectable, he was just the most respectable.
And then he died!
Did you know that the 10th century was so dangerous that 100% of the people born in that century died! Yeah, I know, crazy. Not like in the 21st century, where no one dies! Except for the people in Gaza, the people in Afghanistan, muslims overall, discriminated peoples overall, etc., but we can just ignore them! One of these unfortunate 100% who died in the 10th century was our poor sometimes-friend: Hywel the Good. It’s unknown what he died of, but he certainly died of something, since we don’t see him walking around in our “modern” society, do we? After his death, his kingdom was split into three, and then trough a complex set of inbreeding and invasions we arrive at modern day Wales, part of the UK. No cat laws in sight. So, this book is – as I said – only useful if you’re living in Wales between the years of 942 CE and 950 CE.
The three kingdoms
After Hywel’s death (as mentioned before), Wales was split into three kingdoms. For simplicities sake, I’ll call them north Wales, southwest Wales and south Wales. These kingdoms would grow to have their own cat laws (and laws as a whole), and as such: I will be pointing out when there’s a noticeable difference between their laws.
Why am I bringing up this?
Well, I’m bringing up Hywel the Good because of his significance in the cat-lover sphere. He laid out the foundations for the cat laws of the later times (which, in reality, are just later 10th century times) and hey! He basically allowed me to make this book! But to be honest, if he didn’t create cat laws, someone else would.
Next chapter: The trading and commodifying of cats
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