When Pomona returned to the cardboard box, the cat that needed a new home was gone.
She looked around but saw no sign of it.
After thinking it over, she decided it had probably gone back to look for its owner. As long as its owner had not left the school, the cat should be able to find its way back, even if its sense of smell was not as keen as a dog's.
So she sat down on the porch beside the box, unsure whether she was waiting for it to return or simply wanted to zone out for a while.
Quite a few people kept sheepdogs too. With their help, shepherds could tend their flocks with ease. One person could manage thousands of sheep, without needing as much manpower as wheat farming did.
Wheat was the Romans' staple food. It was a dryland crop and poorly suited to Britain's damp climate. Poland, Prussia, and Hungary were much better suited for it.
Eastern Europe was also struck by the Black Death, but the feudal lords quickly used force to order the peasants back into the fields. They could not flee as the peasants of Western Europe had—first, they had nowhere to run, and second, there was nowhere for them to go. No matter how devastating the epidemic was to urban populations, villagers would always stream into the cities to fill the gaps. In the countryside, however, wages had to rise to keep people from leaving. A haymaker's pay doubled from five pence to ten.
Hanseatic League cargo ships carried grain from the Hungarian plain across Europe. Other than the first few years, when the sudden population collapse caused famine and drove up food prices, agricultural prices remained low. In 1377, they even reached a historic low.
Falling grain prices,