Fun Fact/ National Library Week

According to an article on Literary Hub, Egypt, where cats are believed to have been first domesticated, is also where the relationship with bookstores can be traced. While mainly used to keep rodents and poisonous snakes away from homes and crops, some cats were trained specifically to keep pests from eating away at the papyrus rolls that contained texts.

Photo by Sam Lion

More recently in the 1800s after the plague ravaged most of Europe, governments paid libraries to keep cats in order to protect their books from being eaten by rodents.

Photo By: Cottonbro