The Chartreux is mentioned for the first time in 1558 by Joachim du Bellay in a poem entitled Vers Français sur la mort d'un petit chat (French verse on a small kitten's death). There is another representation of a Chartreux in 1747 in the JeanBaptiste Perronneau's painting Magdaleine Pinceloup de la Grange into which the cat is painted as a pet which is quite rare at this time. There is a legend that the Chartreux are descended from cats brought to France by Carthusian monks to live in the order's head monastery, the Grande Chartreuse, located in the Chartreuse Mountains north of the city of Grenoble. But in 1972,