Like many saintly women of the middle ages, Gertrude of Nivelles turned down a marriage proposal — arranged by none other than the king, when she was just 10 years old — by vowing to take only Christ as her spouse. Today, hardly anyone remembers this brave act: Gertrude is much more widely known, for honestly no good reason, as the patron saint of cats.
It’s an odd designation because cats never appear in her life’s story. The connection seems to have sprung up quite recently, thanks to a 1981 art book, Metropolitan Cats, which confusedly transposed her longtime association with another animal. In her time, Gertrude was known to pray for people in purgatory’s souls, which in paintings are often portrayed as mice. Fun, but the marriage thing is cooler.