I’m a bit
behind on this one, as Hallowe’en was Saturday, but today’s still closer to
Hallowe’en than last Monday was so… Let’s call it good. As someone who has two mostly black cats, I
find it interesting that they’re often considered bad luck. Our black (and white) kitties are the sweetest
cats (if a little butthole-y sometimes, haha).
So many people are predisposed against black cats though because they
have such a negative history and negative connotations. If anything, now, I’m biased towards them.
There are twenty-two recognized breeds
of cat that can have solid black cats.
The only breed of cat that is always all black is the Bombay; created in
the 1950s by mixing the black American shorthair and the sable Burmese, they
were created to look like a mini panther.
Slightly more male than female cats can be all black. Because of the high melanin in black cats,
they generally have that golden yellow eye color. A lot of black cats are really just
suppressed tabby cats; you can see the tabby in certain lights. Black cats with a white root are called “black
smoke”, while black cats that look brown in the sun are said to “rust” in the
sunlight.
To combat the negative history of
black cats (which we’ll get to shortly), August 17 is “Black Cat Appreciation
Day” and October 27 in Great Britain is “Black Cat Day”. These days are trying to get more people to
not be afraid of black cats and to love them.
In the United States in shelters, black cats have a lower adoption rate
than other colors of cats. Social media
pushes towards making black cats favorable are helping. Oddly, social media is also causing people to
shy away from adopting black cats because they don’t photograph as well and
therefore probably won’t become the next internet superstar cat.
Now to get
to the history of black cats (and a little on cats generally). In Egypt, cats were revered. They could catch and kill cobras and other
pests. A lot of cats were even honored
with mummification. In Ancient Egypt
there was even a cat goddess, Bast or Bastet.
Bastet was a woman with the head of a cat (originally the head of a
lion. Cats as pets were becoming popular
and so her image changed around 1000 BCE).
Egyptians believed they could gain Bastet’s favor by having black cats
in their home. Cats were so revered that
killing a cat was a capital offense.
The Norse
liked cats as well. One of the names
that the goddess Freya was known as was Mistress of the Cats. Her chariot was pulled by multiple pairs of
large cats the color of night. With the
spread of Christianity, though, other religions became bad and the things they
believed were turned on their head. This
is probably part of why cats became bad: the Egyptians and Norse liked them and
Christianity couldn’t have that.
We’ll get
to black cats’ association with witches shortly, but first, in some places
black cats are considered good luck. In
a lot of Britain black cats are good, and in Japan as well. One belief in England was that “a lady who
owns a black cat will have many suitors” (1).
In most of the UK, a black cat crossing your path is good. In Germany, if the cat crosses from right to
left it is considered bad luck, but if they cross from left to right it’s good
luck. In the English Midlands, a black
cat is considered good luck to give to a bride on her wedding day.
In some of
England, and much of Europe, black cats are unlucky. Essex was the first place in England to get
cats, and they also had a lot of witchcraft.
In England and Ireland, there is the story of the Cat Sith, a large
black cat, possibly with a white spot on its chest. The Cat Sith is either a fairy disguised as a
cat, or a witch in the form of a cat.
The Cat Sith could “steal a dead person’s sould before [the] gods could
claim it”.
By 1348,
black cats were associated with the devil and were nearly exterminated. This was the time of the Black Death,
believed to be caused by God’s wrath.
People would try to “placate him by burning women accused of witchcraft”
(2); black cats were guilty by association.
With the killing of so many cats, it actually caused the rat population
to explode, making the plague worse. In
Kidwelly in southwest Wales, though, when people came to the town after the
plague, the only living creature around was a black cat and so it became the town’s
mascot.
Cats were associated
with witches because “alley cats were often cared for and fed by the poor
lonely old ladies … later accused of witchery” (3). Cats were then seen as these witches’
companions, which morphed into being their familiars. In 1560s Lincolnshire, another story goes, a
father and son were out walking at night when a black cat crossed their path,
and so they threw rocks at it causing the cat to run into a house. Unfortunately the house it ran into was that
of a suspected witch. When the woman was
seen the next day she had bruises like the cat would have had, and was
limping. This helped lead to the belief
that witches could turn into black cats at night. It was even said that you shouldn’t discuss
anything family related or personal in front of a black cat in case it was a
witch in disguise.
These
beliefs helped feed into the Pilgrims paranoias related to the devil. They were afraid of anything devil
related. Witches were brides of the
devil or had signed a pact with him.
Anything related to the witch was therefore bad as well. Black cats got caught up in this. In some cases anyone caught with a black cat
could “be severely punished or even killed” (4). It didn’t help that the color black itself
had negative connotations: black mass, black magic, etc.
Witches
also were associated with black cats because of the cats’ natural ability to
blend in at night as well as cats’ highly nocturnal nature. The way cats almost always land on their feet
when they fall, and the reflective tapetum lucidum in their eyes, added to the
strange behavior cats were known for. If
we add to all this that the Pilgrims were in a new and unfamiliar place and
were suspicious of the unusual anyway, this added up to a lot of cries of
witchcraft and lots of negative associations for black cats.
King
Charles I of England didn’t believe all this nonsense though. He was on the other side of the matter and
believed black cats to be lucky. He
owned a black cat and just loved it and believed it brought him good luck. When his cat died, Charles believed his luck
was gone as well. Supposedly the next
day Charles was arrested and charged with high treason; his luck had definitely
run out.
Other people
also didn’t think of black cats as bad. Sailors in search of a ship cat wanted a black
cat because it would bring them good luck.
Fisherman’s wives also wanted black cats because of this association
with the sea, hoping the cat “would be able to use their influence to protect
their husbands at sea” (5). If a black
cat walked onto a ship and then walked off again, though, the ship would sink
on its next trip. In the 18th
century, pirates believed that a black cat walking towards you was bad luck,
but walking away from you was good luck.
Many in the UK believed the opposite: that a cat was bringing you good
luck and if it was walking away from you it was taking the luck away with it.
In
Yorkshire it was believed that black cats were lucky to own, but unlucky if
they just crossed your path. In Scotland
a strange black cat appearing on your porch brought you prosperity. In Japan, “black manekineko (beckoning cats)
are a wish for good health” (6).
In the 1880s,
black became associated with anarchists and so a black cat in a fighting stance
became an anarchist symbol. In the early
20th century, the International Workers of the World (IWW), or the
Wobblies, used a black cat as their symbol, playing off its negative history. If an employer the Wobblies had an issue with
saw the black cat symbol, they knew it was bad luck for them.
In England,
early 20th century football cartoons used black cats. When one young supporter kept a black kitten
in his pocket throughout the 1937 finals, and Sunderland won, Sunderland
adopted the cat as their nickname/mascot.
In the early days of television, many channel thirteens used black cats
as their mascots, as well, to play off the unlucky nature of their channel number.
There are
positive cats, and specifically black cats, in popular culture though. There are Dick Whittington and Puss in
Boots. There’s Felix the Cat, and Booboo
Kitty from Laverne and Shirley. There
was a black cat named Isis on an original episode of Star Trek. There are black cats in Edgar Allan Poe
stories, Neil Gaiman stories; there’s a black cat character in a Marvel comic;
there’s a Janet Jackson song. There are
still negative connotations related to black cats, but I think the positives
are slowly gaining on them. I, for one,
love my black kitties and hate to think that people have silly superstitions
about them.
1, 4, 5 - Black Cat
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