July 20, 1822

Gregor Mendel (July  20, 1822 to January 6, 1884) had not published the results of his experiments when Darwin worked out his ideas about speciation. Which I always find interesting: the vista of ignorances we usually manage to obscure.

Gregor Mendel was, we read:

'Born into a poor farming family in the 19th century, ...[and] struggled to pay for his education until he joined a monastery of Augustinian friars. The monastery paid for his living expenses and allowed him to conduct his now-famous studies on genetics. He focused on the traits of pea plants over a period of seven years, then published a paper that summarized his findings, refuting the idea that offspring had an equal "blend" of their parents' characteristics. His research went relatively unnoticed, however, until after his death. Today, he is hailed as the father of modern genetics.'

And I have not found proof the Mendel had a cat at the monastery. One writer though, drew this evocative picture

'Up the monastery walls, the brewery’s yeast-scent
huffles. And the dusty cat, stretched high
over warm stones, swings its blunt snout this way
and that, yeast-ward and monk-ward, from
release to salvation. In the bright sun
her irises, like shutters, close,
leaving just a strip of liquid glint, the pupil’s
vertical box.'

This is the first stanza of "Gregor Mendel, 1857," written by Linda Bierds. The likely thing is there were cats at the monastery-- their function for pest control, non-polluting, ecologically harmless, and effective, had not yet been judged "inefficient."