The Devil's Cats

The Devil’s Cats: This chapter introduces the reader to Karl Marx’s feline lineage and contextualizes the centuries-long assault on domestic cats as agents of witches and the devil as the result of the disintegrating feudal mode of production; the cat emerges as a counterpart to the noble lion and the disinherited come to be associated with cats: peasants kill the Sherriff of London, Richard Lyons, in an uprising; Karl Marx’s ninth great-grandfather, Rabbi Isaac Kaztenellenbogen (the name translates as “cat’s elbow”), is forced to flee Germany for Venice, city of cats and emergent seat of finance capital.