Some Things Never Change.

Some things, it seems, never change. Such as the fascination of cats with turning spindles. Or, indeed, many other textile implements that move. That can make work quite, ah, let's call it "interesting"...

I'm rather fortunate in that our little-not-so-little cat is quite uninterested in textile works, usually. She will sit down on fabrics laid out on the floor, and on my note papers and scale printouts, but she is rarely trying to catch or eat or mangle the textiles themselves or the tools I use. (She will, however, try to bite the end of a pen when I am trying to write something while she hangs out on my desk. That, I can say, is also rather annoying and not helpful at all. It's even worse than her walking across the keyboard, which is over soon, or putting her paw onto the touchpad, which can be remedied by a slightly awkward but sustainable different position of my arms.)

Anyway - the fascination of cats with moving textile tools, and especially spindles, can also be seen captured in a manuscript dating to 1310-1320. A marginalia shows St. Gertrude of Nivelles, dressed as a nun, and spinning. With a companion cat. A very helpful one. The manuscript, Stowe 17, is in the possession of the British Library, and you can see the digitised image here. (I'm not placing it on the blog here due to copyright restrictions, though I'd have very much liked to adorn this post with the kitty directly.)