Cats

Cats are presented as household animals whose perceived usefulness became urgent during the Shivers of 59–60 AC. Although the Citadel never accepted the theory that rats carried the disease as proven, fear of infection made cats suddenly necessary in homes throughout the Seven Kingdoms, from castles to humble huts. Their significance lies in this widespread response to contagion: an ordinary animal became an object of exceptional demand when the source of a deadly illness remained uncertain.

Rats, Disease, and Demand

The Shivers was believed to have come to Westeros from across the sea, and port cities and harbor towns were struck first and hardest. Many smallfolk blamed not the familiar, large grey rats of King’s Landing and Oldtown, but smaller black rats seen emerging from ships at dock and scurrying down their mooring ropes. The Citadel did not consider their guilt established, yet the suspicion was enough to make a cat seem essential in every household.

The demand was reflected in the price of kittens, which rose as high as that of destriers before the disease had run its course. The account gives no evidence that cats cured or prevented the Shivers; their importance is instead in the urgency with which people sought them while the disease’s origins and treatment remained unknown. Against a winter of failing harvests and rising food prices, the sudden premium on kittens marks how fear could reorder everyday priorities.

The Royal Household’s Response

The fear of rats reached the Red Keep as the Shivers moved across Blackwater Bay and up the Blackwater Rush. King Jaehaerys ordered a hundred new ratcatchers hired and offered a silver stag for every dead rat, grey or black. The order extended the response beyond household pets: the crown sought to reduce the suspected carriers directly, even though the theory had not been confirmed.

Princess Daenerys, six years old and beloved throughout the realm, asked for her kitten while she was ill. It was brought to her, but as her shivering worsened it squirmed from her grasp. Her case shows the personal scale of the epidemic within the royal family: alongside ratcatchers, prayers, poultices, hot soups, baths, blankets, furs, stones, and nettle tea, the household attended to the comfort the child herself requested.

Cats and the Limits of Remedy

The disease’s course was swift, and the maesters knew neither how to stop it nor how to cure it. A chill could develop into severe shivering and convulsions, and death could follow within a day; only one victim in five was said to recover. Cats belonged to a larger field of improvised responses to that uncertainty, but the narrative distinguishes popular belief from established knowledge: rats were suspected, not proved responsible, and the many measures attempted for the sick did not save Daenerys.

The kitten thus appears both as part of a public reaction to a feared source of infection and as a small, personal presence beside a dying child. Its arrival could answer Daenerys’s request, but not alter the outcome. The account leaves cats with no demonstrated power over the disease, while making clear how urgently people sought them when explanation and effective treatment were beyond reach.