The Great Cat Massacre

The Great Cat Massacre took place in the late 1730s in Paris. Apprentice printers living and working on Rue Saint-Séverin in Paris suffered hard conditions and so resented the favours which their masters gave to their cats. They contrived to be ordered to deal with nuisance cats and then slaughtered sackloads of them so as to distress their masters. This was an early form of workers' protest. [cite book | url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=x58KwM7PhhgC&pgis=1 | title=The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History | author=Robert Darnton | isbn=0394729277 | year=1985] [cite book | title=The Massacre in History |author= Mark Levene, Penny Roberts | url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PjPCmnzztfkC | isbn=1571819347 | year= 1999 | publisher=Berghahn Books]

The cats were a favourite of the printer's wife and were fed much better then the apprentices, who were in turn served 'catfood' (rotting meat scraps). Aside from this, they were maltreated, beaten and exposed to cold and horrible weather. One of the apprentices imitated a cat by howling like one for several nights, making the printer and his wife despair. Finally, the printer ordered the cats rounded up and despatched. The apprentices did this, rounded up all the cats they could find, beat them half to death and held a 'trial'. They found the cats guilty of witchcraft and sentenced them to death by hanging.

ee also

* List of massacres

References