Cats, Peacocks, Elephants

If you saw my video clip announcing the publishing of this blog you already know I sustained a “major injury” last night while sleepily caressing the feet of Truman our house cat, or as I like to call him, our house panther. I don’t know if he bit me, or scratched me because I was half asleep, but the blood flowed for a couple of minutes. He was unceremoniously dumped off my lap, onto the floor. (We’ve since made up.)

According to my mother, domestic cats are only one generation from returning to the wild. She used to tell a charming story about how when she was young and living on a farm in a very rural part of New Zealand their house cat returned to the wild. She came back some time later and presented a litter of kittens to the family for their approval. The kittens were wild and could not be touched.  I know that’s anecdotal evidence, but I believe it because it sounds plausible. (See how that works?) Truman still behaves like a wild cat, on occasion, and he had no trouble fending for himself for three weeks when he ran away.

I’ve alluded to the absence of felis silvestrus catus in the British Isles in a previous blog. There is no evidence that they lived in Britian before the Romans arrived. It is believed that the Romans brought cats to Britain to help control rats and mice. If so, the English owe more than a little gratitude to their former overlords. I cannot imagine life without at least the possibility of sharing space with a house cat. We’ve acquired a couple by means of the “Cat Distribution System” that is, we were selected by a cat who arrived on our doorstep, and then never left.

A common, half joking rhetorical question of some British is “what did the Romans ever do for us, anyway?” The usual tag line is “apart from the roads”. But actually, the Romans can be credited for hundreds of introduced species, including cats, to the island they ruled for four hundred years.

I know dog lovers out there are wondering if dogs were introduced by the Romans, but the answer is no. Dogs have accompanied humans all over the world since at least the stone age. Dogs apparently quickly saw the advantage of the scraps from around the cooking fires of ancient humans. Cats have had a much slower, more measured approach toward sharing their royal selves with us. Cats are more independent and much less food motivated than dogs. They have also suffered periods of hatred and extermination from time to time. But I digress.

What other things did the Romans introduce to Britain, apart from excellent road making?

Here’s a very incomplete list:

Animals: rabbits, several breeds of cattle, fallow deer, pigs, goats, donkeys, pheasants, peacocks, guinea fowl, ravens, crows, and a breed of herding dog. They supposedly also took elephants, to awe the native Britons. This was recorded by Casius Dio who wrote about Claudius’s invasion of Britain in 43 BC. However, because he was not an eye witness many historians think the “elephants” may have been some kind of siege machinery. I’m trying to imagine the Romans transporting elephants across the channel!

Plants: figs, grapes, apples, cherries, plums, peaches, walnuts, almonds, olives, celery, cucumber, cabbage, carrots, leeks, onions, asparagus, rosemary, thyme, parsley, black pepper, bay leaf, basil, mint.

In four hundred years there was time for most of these introduced species to have taken hold so ubiquitously that by the Middle Ages people thought of them as native to Britain, and some of the literature references them as such. The peacock is an interesting example of an introduced species, originally from India, that most likely disappeared when the Romans left and then was reintroduced to courtly gardens much later on.

When the Romans left, they had changed almost everything about the culture of the Britons. But after they left, the Britons reverted to many of the old ways. It seems there was an intentional neglect of structures, and organization. But the plants and animals were there to stay.