This thesis is a social and cultural history of pet keeping across Western Europe in the late medieval period (and the early modern period where relevant). A central argument is that women and clerics were the majority of pet keepers in the period, and a change towards the acceptability of pet keeping by secular lay men was due to the influence of humanist scholars, who kept pets and eulogised them in their literary compositions. Topics discussed in depth are the display of status through pet keeping, practicalities of pet keeping (such as care and food), the place of the pet in space, especially in domestic interiors, social tolerance towards pets and contemporary criticism of the practice, pet keeping by scholars and elegies written in praise of pets. I end with a discussion of pet keeping at court in the early modem period, concentrating on a case study of pets at the Mantuan court.