The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The medieval Latin words I used as the title of this post were written down by a scribe in Cologne, Germany, around 1420 AD after a cat peed on a page. The full text warns others not to leave books open in places where cats can come:
Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam. Confundatur pessimus cattus qui minxit super librum istum in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum. Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem ubi cattie venire possunt.
Google translates it differently but I prefer my version: Confound that pesty cat. And, I am sure, it’s a curse that is still heard often, except that what is left open may not be a hand-crafted tome but, perhaps, the ruined keyboard of a laptop computer.
Though I never actually had a laptop ruined, I did have my own adventures with cats doing what cats do, to things they were not supposed to touch. A cat, after all, is the only cat who knows how to cat.
Illustration is by ChatGPT, not the poor Deventer scribe.