Between 1856 and 1859, Emily Mary Madden, then aged eight to eleven, dedicated a small notebook to her family's cat, Mouton.
The strokes are clearly a child's, but the eyes, whiskers, fur, and the dark hatching on the tail are carefully detailed.
Across the pages, Mouton encounters an elephant, appears before the queen, rides a rooster, tangles with mice, and takes up arms against a spider.
Mouton was actually a French tomcat given to Emily's father, Sir Frederic Madden, by a bookseller in 1854. Frederic was a distinguished paleographer and librarian who worked with manuscripts at the British Museum.