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Five tombs from the late Northern Song Dynasty (1085-1125) were discovered in Gaojiahe Village, Ningqiang County, Hanzhong City, Shaanxi Province, China. Four of them are single-chamber brick vaulted tombs, and one is a double-chamber brick vaulted tomb. The tombs are similar in shape, and researchers believe that they should be family tombs. In addition to a large number of unearthed artifacts, many exquisitely carved and lifelike cat brick carvings were also unearthed.

Cat Brick Sculpture

Brick vaulted chamber tombs are one of the forms of ancient Chinese tombs, which began in the Western Han Dynasty. Brick carvings developed from the combination of tiles from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, Qin bricks and Han Dynasty portrait bricks. In the Northern Song Dynasty, brick carvings were formed and became decorations for tomb murals. The content of brick carvings reflects the social status of the tomb owner. Common themes include the tomb owner and his wife sitting opposite each other, and the reproduction of the tomb owner's life scenes before his death. Therefore, there are many life-like scenes.

Ancient people mostly followed the concept of "treating the dead as if they were alive", so most of the related artifacts unearthed from the tombs were the same as when the tomb owner was alive. The many cat brick carvings in the tombs not only show that the tomb owner loved cats, but also show that in the late Northern Song Dynasty, raising cats had become a common social habit among the Song people at that time.

Why was cat ownership so common in the Song Dynasty? Perhaps it had a lot to do with the serious rat infestation at the time.

Compared with the Tang Dynasty, when leisure and entertainment were mainly pursued by upper-class scholars, leisure life in the Song Dynasty was more commercialized, popularized, and popularized. Because of the flourishing of Buddhism, people in the Song Dynasty were keen on releasing and protecting animals. Wang Anshi, a well-known politician and writer in the Northern Song Dynasty, once wrote a poem called "Releasing Fish":

Catch fish in shallow water and throw them into the deepest water. When the summer heat is over, swim away.

Is there no good cook who can serve seven chopsticks? All creatures and I are afraid of bitterness, and would rather eat meat than give it up.

This shows that Wang Anshi has love and compassion for animals other than humans.

Although there were records of cats and raccoons in the pre-Qin period, it was not until the Han Dynasty that Chinese people successfully domesticated wild cats, and cats were gradually kept by people after the Tang Dynasty. Su Shi, a famous writer in the Northern Song Dynasty, once advised: "Raise cats to get rid of mice. You can't raise cats that don't catch mice when there are no mice." Cats are used to illustrate what you should do in your position and that you should stick to your duties. This shows that the proportion of people who kept cats in the Song Dynasty was quite high, which also points out that the original purpose of raising cats was to catch mice.

Since ancient times, rats have brought many troubles to human life. In addition to eating food, rats also gnaw on various items in the house, which is also one of the sources of damage to crops. For the literati in the Song Dynasty, in addition to the above concerns about rats in the house, they are more concerned about whether their collections of calligraphy and paintings will be harmed by rats. Therefore, cats that can catch rats and protect calligraphy and paintings were written into poems. For example, Mei Yaochen, a famous literati in the Northern Song Dynasty, left a "Sacrifice to Cats" for cats: "Since I have a five-white cat, rats will not invade my books", in memory of the kitten who once defended his books.

Song Dynasty People Playing with Cats

Lu You, a scholar in the Southern Song Dynasty, was also troubled by rats. He had the idea of ​​raising a cat and finally got what he wanted: "I packed salt to welcome a little cat, who protected the thousands of books in my mountain house." The "cat" in the poem is the nickname for cats in the Song Dynasty. Because the cat was so efficient in catching mice, Lu You was very satisfied and wrote a poem to record it:

No one burns incense for the servants, only the cat servant is willing to accompany them in the meditation room. They study and sleep together on the bed to keep warm, and sit together at night to listen to the long drum.

Jia Yong was able to empty the rat hole, and Cexun was more than just stepping on the intestines of the barbarians. Although the fish is thin, I am not ashamed, and I am not busy catching butterflies among the flowers.

The demand for cats increased dramatically, which led to the development of cat trading. For example, the Xiangguo Temple in Bianjing (now Kaifeng City, Henan Province) would be open regularly for people to buy and sell cats and dogs. The Dreams of the Southern Song Dynasty scholar Wu Zimu wrote in "Dreams of the Southern Song Dynasty" that "Xiangguo Temple is open to all kinds of people for trading five times a month. The three main gates are full of birds, cats, dogs, and other rare animals."

Song Dynasty People Playing with Cats

In the Southern Song Dynasty, in Lin'an (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province), in addition to selling various rare water and land birds such as red parrots, white sparrows, silver crabs, and golden turtles, various religious and festival temple fairs also sold pet-related feed and supplies, and even cat beds, bird cages, and insect cages. In addition, wealthy families in the Song Dynasty also loved to raise a kind of cute "lion cat". "Menglianglu" records: "There are long-haired, white and yellow ones called lion cats. They cannot catch mice, but they are beautiful. Many people in government offices keep them as pets, and they are especially loved by the nobles." In addition to causing a breeding trend in Lin'an, lion cats were even popular in the Jin Dynasty, and the Jin Dynasty repeatedly asked the Song court for "lion cats".

The Song people kept cats to catch mice, but the result of over-pampering was that cats lost their mouse-catching instinct.

Hu Zhonggong, a poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, wrote a poem called "Sleeping Cat":

The rat stole all the millet from the bottle, and the cat on the bed was sleeping without knowing it.

Helplessly, his family still loved him and bought him fish and food to feed him.

The cat on the bed is only snoring, and is completely indifferent to the mice gnawing at the food everywhere. Although it can't catch mice, it is still loved by its owner. It can be seen that with the prosperity of society, the Song people no longer kept cats only for practical purposes such as anti-theft and mouse catching. They were more willing to become "cat slaves" for leisure, enjoyment and companionship.