Item tres canes ad custodiendum oves. Item unum leporarium.
One commonly encounters animals in the DALME corpus. A number of inventories list horses, cattle, and/or pigs as well as herds of goats and sheep. Occasionally one runs across a house that kept chickens. In a different vein, bees, or at least beehives, show up from time to time. But pets are surprisingly invisible. Several inventories list parrot cages without making any mention of the parrot, and although a number of houses were presumably animated by pets such as cats and dogs, inventories almost never mention them. Apparently, pets weren't considered objects possessing the kind of value necessary to be considered worthy of inclusion in an inventory.
To date, the DALME team have yet to find a reference to a cat. The inventory of Antonius Stephani is one of the rare records that makes mention of a dog. Antonius, a resident of Marseille who died in 1409, was a butcher, and the inventory of his estate includes references to a good deal of livestock. One stable housed a horse and two donkeys. In his shop, the compilers of the inventory found 100 salted pigs and 124 sheep. Also listed in the shop were "three dogs for guarding the sheep," along with "a greyhound," two of the rare sightings of dogs in the DALME collection. The fact that these were working dogs rather than pets probably explains their inclusion in Antonius's estate.