There’s an essay I’ve never written about the relationship between superheroes in American Comics and costumed performers in American Circuses of the same period, and how the comics characters were the circus performers, and I will probably never get around to writing it. But then I see photos like this and wish I’d written it 30 years ago.
This 14th century door at Exeter Cathedral, UK, is thought to be the oldest existing cat flap.
A cat was paid a penny each week, to keep down the rats and mice in the north tower, and a cat flap was cut into the door below the astronomical clock to allow the cat to carry out its duties.
Records of payments were entered in the Cathedral archives from 1305 to 1467, the penny a week being enough to buy food to supplement a heavy diet of rodents.
Isaac Newton is often credited as the inventor of the cat flap to the outside world. He was also credited with having made a smaller cat flap next to it for the kittens.
