Not crazy at all! A 17th century woman's bequest to her cat...

London, printed for James Read, 1695

This may well be one of my favorite discoveries in the Early Modern English books...EVER!

"Great News from Southwark: or, the Old Woman's Legacy to her Cat."

Oh, yes! It's exactly what you think. Read on!

Naturally, the subtitle says it all...

“Giving An Account of an Old Miserable Woman, who lately kept a blind ale-house, in St. Tooley-Streat, near the Burrough of Southwark; who was so wretchedly covetous, as to deny her self the common benefits of life, as to meat and cloaths; leaving, at her death, about fifteen hundred pounds, to her cat, using to say often, when the cat mow’d:

“Peace Puss, peace:
Thou Shalt have All, when I am Dead.’”

The poem that ensues is a bit silly but sort of endearing as well. (And I have to say, it was nice to see a relationship between a woman and her cat that was not wrapped in accusations of witchcraft, bestiality or other fantastical conjectures.)

As the story goes, for years, this "mean" woman did not spend her money, preferring to keep her alehouse earnings to herself.

Finally, when no one had seen her for a while, one of her neighbors went in to check on her:

“Upstairs he went, and in the bed,

He found the Rich Old Woman dead:

And, looking in a truk just by,

Near Eighteen Hundred Pounds did lie.

No sooner he had found the hoard,

But he divulg’d it all abroad:

Then shockt the neighbours, to behold,

The Treasur’d bags of coyned gold.

Thus did she cheat the battle such,

They thought her poor; for she was rich:

Her belly saved it for her CAT,

But Puss must shew the will for that."

Unfortunately, there's no word on what the cat did with her legacy, but hopefully she was able to get a nice mouse cobbler from time to time.

Not crazy though, right?