Baltimore – The Walters Art Museum (Cat Mummy)

Cats were bred near to temple sites and they were mummified as a gift to the Gods. The cats were mummified on an industrial scale and sadly a vast number were destroyed during the nineteenth century. In Liverpool in 1890, a consignment of 180,000 mummified cats were sold as fertiliser.

The museum’s photo of its cat is of course somewhat better than mine…. This cat was carefully and tightly wrapped in linen and when the museum x-rayed it they discovered that “its neck was intact, with the forelegs pressed down against the body and hind legs folded together”.