• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

The Cat Flap Is Surprisingly Ancient, And Not The Work Of Isaac Newton

September 22, 2022 by Deborah Bloomfield

The cat flap may not be the most sophisticated of inventions – a tiny flap in a door that a cat can get through is not Nikola Tesla territory – yet they have still been around a surprisingly long time.

They even make an appearance in churches dating back to the 16th century, though it should be noted that this is a doggy door for the locals’ dogs, rather than strictly a flap for cats.

Advertisement

The invention of the cat flap has been attributed to a few people, with one story attributing it to Isaac Newton. According to the (unlikely) tale, Newton created a hole in his door and draped a cloth over it as a flap after his cat kept ruining photosensitive experiments by opening the door and letting light in.

In some versions of the tale, Newton cut two holes in his door: a big one for the cat, and a second smaller hole for his kitten, not realizing that the kitten would go through the big hole with the cat.

As fun as that sounds, it’s likely not true, and the story appears to come from a good 70 years after his death. However, mathematician John M.F. Wright, a scholar at Trinity College London about a century after Newton, did note that “whether this account be true or false, indisputably true is it that there are in the door to this day two plugged holes of the proper dimensions for the respective egresses of cat and kitten.”

Advertisement

If it was true, Newton was still too late to have invented it, especially if you include its predecessor: the simple cat hole.

It’s difficult to track exactly when the cat door was invented, though we know it was sometime before Newton. The cat hole was mentioned as far back as Chaucer’s late-14th-century The Canterbury Tales, and used by a servant to peek into a room.

“An hole he foond, ful lowe upon a bord

Advertisement

Ther as the cat was wont in for to crepe,

And at the hole he looked in ful depe,

And at the last he hadde of hym a sighte.”

Advertisement

Cats have likely been at least partly domesticated from about 9,000 years ago, having been welcomed by humans at first as a form of pest control, taking out rodents that eat grain harvests. It’s probable that we gave food to keep them around and doing their thing, before eventually giving them the freedom to get in and out of the house that will never be afforded to dogs.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. U.S. Senator Manchin casts doubt on Democrats’ deadline for budget bill
  2. Armed man killed in shooting at Calif. beach
  3. Coinbase says hackers stole cryptocurrency from at least 6,000 customers
  4. Bitcoin climbs to highest in nearly two weeks

Source Link: The Cat Flap Is Surprisingly Ancient, And Not The Work Of Isaac Newton

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Bathroom Scrollers Beware! Phone Use On The Toilet Could Up Your Risk Of Hemorrhoids By 46 Percent
  • Marsquakes Reveal A Solid Inner Core In The Red Planet
  • For The First Time Ever We Have A Complete Map Of Brain Activity, And It’s Dazzling
  • This Very Strange Fish Has Clear Blood And Is The Only Known Vertebrate To Lack Hemoglobin
  • Government Warning Uses AI Video To Show What Will Happen To Tokyo If Mount Fuji Erupts
  • Astonishing Restored Photos Show NASA’s Pre-Apollo Missions In All Their Glory
  • How To Get More IFLScience: Add Us As A “Preferred Source” On Google
  • “This Appears To Be A Universal Law”: 50-Year-Old Mystery About Our Sun’s Storms May Have Been Solved
  • Watch First-Ever Footage Of A Black Jaguar Mating In The Wild
  • A New Blue Zone? Researchers Find Another Region Where People Live Exceptionally Long Lives
  • LIGO Could Detect Gravitational Waves From An Alien Spacecraft, But There’s A Catch
  • How Outer Space Helps Clouds Form On Earth
  • Teenager With Exceptional “Mental Time Travel” Abilities Sees Past And Future With Rare Clarity
  • Think Hay Fever Season Is Over? Think Again – Fall Allergies Are On The Way
  • Microscopic Engine Is Hottest In The World – Just Like The Core Of The Sun
  • Gerrymandering Explained: How Math Is Used For Political Gain To Win Elections
  • The Longest Sperm On Earth Is 20 Times The Animals’ Body Size, But Whose Is It?
  • Ancient Bacterial DNA Has Been Recovered From A 1.1-Million-Year-Old Mammoth
  • On Sunday, 7 Billion People Will See The Moon Turn Red. But Who Will See The Blue Band?
  • 670-Year-Old Manuscript On “Unexplained Phenomena” Is Bad News For Believers In The Shroud Of Turin
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version