LOLCats and medieval memes

The latest generation of pet owners have grown up with the internet and it’s the first place they look when searching for a vet. But the savvy practice doesn’t place all its hope on a professional-looking website to attract fresh faces.

Forward-thinking practices engage with prospective clients by having an active presence on Facebook and Twitter.

So, when you are next trawling the internet looking for inspiration for the clinic’s latest eye-catching post to the Twittersphere, it is inevitable you will encounter a phenomenon known as “LOLCats”.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, LOLCats are a sensation and have been since 2006 when the name was first coined.

What are LOLCats?

Does it help to know LOLCats are cat memes? No, I thought not.

Put simply, LOLCats are cat photographs bearing an amusing caption (oh, and the LOL stands for “laugh out loud” – just in case, like David Cameron, you thought otherwise). Typically, the caption is written in “kitty pidgin” using deliberately misspelt words such as “hoomum”, “unnerstan” and “zleeping”.

The success of LOLCats arises from the unbearably cute photos and witty observations about the superiority of cats over all other species (including “hoomums”). Such is their success, it is rumoured the main impetus behind the creation of the internet was to act as a vehicle to better disseminate LOLCat love.

However, it transpires the Victorians were also rather fond of cat memes. Even more surprisingly, evidence would indicate it is medieval monks who bear ultimate responsibility for the invention of LOLCats.

Victorians

One of the great inventions of the 19th century was photography. Indeed, the era of photography was ushered in by a selfie (there really is nothing new under the sun) taken by Robert Cornelius in 1839. He took the self-portrait at the back of a building in Chestnut Street, Philadelphia and wrote the inscription “First light photograph ever taken” on the back of the picture as proof of the momentous event.

In these early days, the subject of the photograph had to sit absolutely still as exposure times ran to several minutes. The results were hit and miss and, once developed, even a perfect photograph was prone to fading once subject to prolonged light.

Over the next four decades, techniques improved to the point where the Holy Grail of photography became possible, at least with regards to LOLCats – taking a picture of a live cat.

Given our national love of pets, it seems entirely appropriate a British man championed the art of cat photography, in the patriotic figure of Harry Pointer – one of Queen Victoria’s Life Guards.

A brief digression, but it was Mr Pointer’s finely shaped calves that first got him involved in photography and, ultimately, cat memes. Apparently, his shapely legs came to the attention of an artist looking for a model to pose as a Roman soldier. In the artist’s own words: “Painting has been delayed for want of a fine pair of legs.” Thus, via a circuitous Pointer entered artistic circles, took up the new craze for photography and changed his career.

Mr Pointer did well as a photographer, but his breakthrough came when photographing his own cat. It then occurred to him to pose two kittens in a shoe, then a cat in a pram, and then he decided it would be amusing to capture cats doing human activities such as cooking, sitting in a highchair or riding a bicycle. The final step was to add a short, witty caption underneath – and the Victorian LOLCat was officially born (pictured left).

These witty photographs were printed on calling cards, postcards and greetings cards, and were hugely popular. Such was his success that, in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee, Mr Pointer was invited to create a catty tribute to the monarch. His piece was entitled “Fifty Cats” and was a composite photograph showing 50 cats, one for each year of her reign.

Monks and marginalia

But it is a mistake to think Mr Pointer was the true originator of LOLCats because the origins reach back even further into the Middle Ages.

Going back centuries before the invention of photography and the printing press, monks sat in scriptoriums, hunched over desks to painstakingly copy and hand-illustrate manuscripts. Beautiful though their calligraphy was, it appears making copies of precious manuscripts could be a boring occupation. Some monks left clues their work was dull by scattering witty drawings amid the usually more staid “marginalia” or small illustrations in the margins of manuscripts.

One particularly famous piece of marginalia shows a medieval squire sneaking around the corner of a block of text to aim an arrow at a cat intent on washing itself (pictured below). Indeed, illustrations of cats washing their nether regions seem to have appealed to the schoolboy sense of humour of many monks.

There were illustrations of cats being besieged by organised armies of mice, flying cats with impressive eagle-like wings and an apparently rocket-powered cat. There were cats sitting at banqueting tables, cats playing stringed instruments, bagpipes and organs, cats being ridden like a pony, cats acting as pallbearers, cats churning butter and even a bow-and-arrow-wielding cat.

Okay, so the purists among you could argue, strictly speaking, these marginalia drawings aren’t actual LOLCats because humorous text is missing. However, it can also be argued the intention is obvious. Indeed, if the point needs proving, how does the internet react when such a drawing is posted with a caption, cat meme style?

Medieval historian Aine Foley tested this out when she recently tweeted the picture of the bow-and-arrow-wielding squire aiming at a cat, with the caption “Cedric was not a cat lover.” Guess what? The picture went viral. Case closed.