What Is Contat's Account Of The Great Cat Massacre

The tale of the great cat massacre of the Rue Saint-Séverin depicts how a group of workers in a printing shop slaughtered hundreds of cats and performed burlesque ‘re-enactments’ of the massacre at least twenty times during subsequent days for the sake of laughter. The source of this disturbing incident comes from Nicholas Contat, who fictionalized himself into the character of Jerome. Jerome, along with his friend Léveillé, were apprentices at the printing shop of Jacques Vincent and both of them can be considered to have kick-started the massacre, later assisted by the journeymen. Journeymen were craftsmen who had completed their apprenticeship but were below the rank of a Master, who in this context was the owner of the printing shop where
The animosity can be analysed to have been created when the social position of the workers in the household was eclipsed by animals, which in this story was cats. It was believed initially, as mentioned in Contat’s account, that printing shops functioned differently in the past when printing was first invented. There was no hierarchy between journeymen and masters, who lived harmoniously and equally within self-governed systems that emphasized equality and fraternity. This ‘mythical’ past was then invoked to fuel the hatred towards the masters for degrading the workers and further demoting their status to below the role of animals. It served as proof of how the workers have gradually been exploited by the Masters (referred to as Bourgeoisie) to such a great extent whereby they now inhabit the lowest rungs of society. Examples such as how the workers were give rotten cat food to eat while cats had their portraits painted and fed on roast fowl confirmed the privileged position that the cats had at the expense of the
Cats, as mentioned early, were symbols for sex and killing La Grise was a metaphoric insult of raping and ravishing the Mistress symbolically. Furthermore, the Master was not spared as well, since he become associated with the stigma of being cuckold. What made the massacre so humorous to the workers was that all the symbolism was so well-veiled yet sharp that the Master was not aware he was being made a cuckold by the workers who had just violated the woman of the bourgeoisie household. The Mistress was also unable to accuse the workers of insulting her modesty. Instead, the workers were merely reprimanded for fooling around killing cats instead of doing