I went to-
http://www.alltheweb.com
because this post had me curious...
I was directed to-
http://www.umich.edu/~bhlumrec/admin...ignorance.html
were I found this...
"A decade ago, the well-known historian, Robert Darnton, published a book entitled The Great Cat Massacre--and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. While doing research into the lives of ordinary French people in the eighteenth century, Darnton came across a writing by a man who had worked in a printing shop. The funniest thing that ever happened there, the worker said, was a riotous massacre of cats one night. Puzzled, Darnton set to work to understand what had happened, rather than being unwilling to grapple with the seemingly incomprehensible or the grotesque idea of a massacre of cats being hilarious. Behind this bizarre statement lay a revealing vignette about the relationships between the bourgeois shop owners, including the owner of the printing shop, and those who labored in the shops. The story, in short form, was simply this: The workers lived a hapless, degraded existence. "They slept in a filthy, freezing room, rose before dawn, ran errands all day while dodging insults from the journeymen and abuse from the master, and received nothing but slops to eat." Shop owners, on the other hand, lived apart from all this mayhem. The owners also happened to have, at this particular time, a passion for cats. As a result, the cat population in Paris had increased dramatically, and for workers, who slept near or above the alleys where the cats congregated at night, it was impossible to sleep for the cats' screeching. The exhausted workers decided to let the cat-loving owners of the printing shop have a taste of what they endured; and, so, one night they climbed to the roof of the owners' house and howled like cats, which kept the mistress awake all night. The next day the mistress ordered the men to kill all the cats in the area, save her own, of course. Gleefully, the workers set about their task, not sparing the mistresses' cat. They staged mock trials with the cats and pretended to have executions. The mistress and the master saw this and flew into a rage. This is what the workers thought was the "funniest thing" they had ever seen.
From this specific incident, so revealing of the nature of the feelings at work at this moment in history, Darnton is able to deepen our understanding of class and labor relations in eighteenth century France and to go on from there to consider the cultural practices of the age, all of which are illuminated by the strange story of the great cat massacre."
VERY STRANGE...Where was PETA when this was happening??
the great cat massacre
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