Anyone with a fondness for animals and enough money to produce a little spare food might keep a rabbit or squirrel. Manuscript pictures show ladies with squirrels in collars that are clearly tame pets.
Birds were also popular small pets. Today’s pet birds are usually exotic birds from the Orient, but in the Middle Ages, the only exotic bird known was the parrot, called a popinjay. It was extremely expensive and very rare. Native birds could be tamed, most commonly jays, jackdaws, and magpies. Jackdaws and magpies could be trained to imitate speech. The queens of England kept cages of small birds such as nightingales, and a few had African parrots—gifts sent by foreign royalty.
North African monkeys were imported to Europe and were popular aristocratic pets. While a monkey would be beyond the means of a university student, who might rather keep a rabbit or bird, some aristocratic ladies kept monkeys. Monkeys could be bought at large international fairs, and traveling minstrels used trained monkeys in their shows.
Cats were not part of early medieval Europe but became popular luxury pets in the late Middle Ages. They rate scantier mention in the bestiaries than mice. They first entered Europe’s economy as small predators similar to ferrets, probably brought from the East on ships. Their bones are found in French towns from the 10th century, but they appear to be small and feral. As the rat population grew in towns, cats were useful town animals to keep them in check. Many churches and businesses kept cats around for that purpose, but these were usually feral cats. Common people must often have tamed them, but they were considered low animals and were always associated with witchcraft by the church. Feral town cats might be killed for their fur, which could be passed off as fox fur if the seller were lucky. Even as cat fur, it had value. In the late Middle Ages, though, travelers began importing exotic breeds, such as the Persian cat, from the East. Exotic cats joined lap dogs as pets for aristocratic ladies, and paintings from the late medieval years show cats in settings with people.
Ladies had lap dogs, and, in the less disciplined convents, nuns kept dogs as pets. The dogs ate table food that might have been given to the poor or used by the nuns themselves, so the church tried to discourage the habit. Even worse, in some places, nuns brought their pets to chapel, where they distracted everyone from the service. Aristocratic ladies kept dogs without any fear of ecclesiastical rebuke; a pet dog was a socially approved sign of wealth. Pet dogs are pictured in manuscript illuminations in different shapes and sizes; some look like small spaniels, a later popular pet of the aristocracy.