Inky paw prints left by a cat on a 15th century manuscript

While researching the medieval manuscript in July 2011, Emir O. Filipović, a teaching  assistant at the University of Sarajevo, discovered pages of the book stained with the inky paw prints of a cat. He took a picture to show it to his friends.


Medieval manuscripts generally contain a lot of strange things - small doodles, strange fungi, elaborate decorated initials, holes presumably drilled through the manuscripts by worms or other pests, and even carefully crafted watermarks.

These inky paw prints were made shortly after writing this pages. Monk must have been furious. You can almost picture the writer shooing the cat in a panicky fashion while trying to remove it from his desk. Despite his best efforts the damage was already complete and there was nothing else he could have done but turn a new leaf and continue his job. In that way this little episode was "archived" in history