Much of what’s shown appear to be details from manuscript illuminations. With cats being drawn along the margins, necessarily tiny depictions would have been required to get them into the picture and amongst the clutter, hence a tiny dot centered on a slightly larger dot would have been the “cheat” taken for the eyes. I don’t think that method was due to indifference; the illuminators owned and apparently cherished their kitties.
This from historyhit.com: Cats were common pets in monasteries where they were kept for their mousing skills, but often treated more as pets. The most famous example of this was Pangur Ban, a 9th century cat from an Irish monastery who became the subject of a poem by an anonymous Irish monk.
