Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Lucky day inquiry - What should I do if I wanted to keep a cat in ancient times?

What should I do if I wanted to keep a cat in ancient times?

In ancient times, if you wanted to keep a cat, it would be divided into the following four steps: recruiting people, choosing a good date, giving a dowry and maintaining it.

1, rent

If you want to keep a cat, you need to take a job first, also called a cat appointment. The contents of the letter of appointment include date, appearance characteristics, etc. And expectations of cats, such as catching mice, don't like stealing food.

Step 2 choose a good day

Of course, we should choose an auspicious day, just as we humans choose the date of marriage. In the Song Dynasty, we also chose good days to welcome cats in books similar to the Yellow Calendar, such as "Jixiang Cup Nursery Rhyme Book".

3. Dowry

Kittens help catch mice at home, protect crops and books, and so on, in exchange for a bag of salt. For domestic cats, salt, sugar and tea are generally used as bride price.

4. Maintenance

In ancient times, people thought that if you stroked a cat's hair in the dark, there would be fleas if there was fire. Liàn In ancient times, people generally soaked cats with peach leaves and neem roots and wiped them with camphor powder.

The benefits of owning a cat

For single friends, cats can accompany themselves, kill boring time and eliminate loneliness. For families, owning a cat can give their children an extra playmate.

Compared with keeping a dog, the advantage of keeping a cat is that it doesn't take too much energy, and the owner can spend more time on his favorite things while keeping a pet. Cats don't need training or taking them out for a walk. Raising them is very worry-free.

Cats are small in size and do little damage to their homes. Unlike dogs who like to tear down their homes, they can turn their homes upside down every day, like natural disasters. Cats are particularly economical to raise because of their small size. They don't eat much food every day, and they don't have much chance to get infected when they stay indoors all day, so they are not easy to get sick and the feeding cost is very low.