Halt, wretches! Unhand that stolen bread and swear off infidelities! Repent or be punished for your deeds and punished profoundly!

Ah, too late. In medieval times, your peers weren’t as patient and forgiving of the so-called petty crimes. Thieves and adultering wives might be spared from the rope or the stake of flames, but punishment aplenty was still at hand.

My favorite of the night uses a tender and familiar term to describe a device designed to produce exquisite pain and mortal damage. Behold the Cat’s Paw. Take your place on the wall and prepare to have your belly scratched. Not to mention your back, your legs, your breasts, your face…

A lesson in simplicity, this lovely tool was used to administer repeated swipes to the flesh of an offending fiend, who hung naked from a narrow wall. The claws, predictably, were thin and sharp like those of a cat. With the strength of a man behind them, the claws would rip away ribbons of flesh, opening long, ragged wounds sometimes to the bone.

If you’ve been effectively swatted by a house cat, you know the sting of that pain. The Cat’s Paw of medieval delight would have amplified that agony a hundredfold. And the clawing went on for minutes or hours, leaving the wretch on the wall a shredded mess of harrowed skin. Death typically resulted from infection after the ravaged transgressor was left to dangle with numerous open wounds.

Remember this the next time you’re tempted to lift a purse from an old lady’s shopping cart. Remember when you ponder taking that dreamy bag boy for a romp in the station wagon. Though such primitive punishments might not await you, there are a thousand cats in the naked city and those mysterious bitches know what’s in your heart.

Powered by ScribeFire.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 3:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.