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Even though many cultures revered and loved the cat, there are also many horror tales of demon-cats who either terrified humankind because of their evilness or used their feline abilities to exact punishment for terrible deeds done to their own kind.
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.
—Jeff Valdez
There have been some weird experiences with the figures of Egyptian mummified cats or their sarcophagi. More than one owner of such an item had terrifying dreams, heard strange noises, and saw horrible apparitions. Several men died of fright or killed themselves after finding or purchasing such artifacts.
One amateur archaeologist put an unopened cat sarcophagus in his study so he could admire it every day. Late one night, as he sat reading, he heard a sharp crack and looked up to find the sarcophagus neatly opened along the sealed seams. As he watched, a thin cloud of black dust arose as the cat mummy disintegrated before his eyes. That night he suffered the first of a long series of terrifying nightmares. Even during the day he was nervous about dim corners and dark hallways, for he said that he saw burning eyes watching him all the time. Within a year, he died of a sudden heart attack.
The remaining cat sarcophagus was inherited by his son, who soon discovered he had inherited the irate cat spirit as well. The eyes began haunting the son day and night until he began to fear he would commit suicide. Finally, he sold it to a collector, who also died mysteriously within a year. After that, the haunted cat sarcophagus and its avenging spirit disappeared from sight, never to be heard of or seen again.
The Japanese both liked and distrusted the cat. Although they treated their cats with great respect, they still had tales of vampire cats who, like the fox and badger, were capable of shapeshifting, tricking, and bewildering humans.
When it comes to Japanese tales of vampires, the vampire is often a cat who takes on the form of its victim afterward. Perhaps this idea comes from the Chinese belief that if a corpse laid out on a bed has a dog under the bed and a cat on the roof above, the dead person will become a vampire. A similar belief is found in some parts of Europe, where it is said that if a cat walks over a corpse it will be turned into a vampire.
The most famous Japanese cat-vampire tale (The Cat of Nabeshima) concerns the Prince of Hizen and his favorite lady, O Toyo. One night at midnight a huge double-tailed cat88 appeared in O Toyo’s chambers. Before she could scream, this demon-cat sprang at her throat and killed her. The cat dug a hole under the veranda, buried the woman, and took on her shape. The prince saw no difference in his beloved, but each day after she visited him, he got weaker and weaker. The cat-demon was slowly draining his blood. The doctors were puzzled and prescribed all kinds of medicine, but nothing helped.
The prince noticed that he always grew weaker at night, so he ordered a hundred servants to stand guard around his bed while he slept. The cat-demon, in woman form, cast a spell causing the servants to sleep while she continued to drain the life from the prince.
Desperate, the prince’s councilors begged a priest to pray for their prince. While at prayer, this priest was disturbed by a young soldier, whose name was Ito Soda. The soldier asked to be allowed to stand guard; his request was granted.
At ten o’clock, as before, the other guards fell asleep, but Ito Soda stuck his dagger into his thigh to keep awake. When the cat-woman entered the room, she couldn’t cast her spells over the prince because Ito Soda wouldn’t let her get near. After two nights, the prince began to get better. Ito Soda, knowing that the beautiful O Toyo was now really an evil demon, went to her quarters and tried to kill her. Unable to defeat the young soldier, the cat demon changed back into its true form and fled into the mountains. After the prince fully regained his strength, he organized a hunt for the cat-demon and destroyed it.
Another story tells of a Japanese knight who, along with a dog, killed a female jinn who demanded human sacrifices. As the knight was journeying into the mountains, he spent a night at a ruined temple. At midnight he awoke to see ghostly cats dancing and chanting, “Don’t tell Shippeitaro.” Then they disappeared. The next day, the knight came to a village and found the people very upset because they had to take their most beautiful girl to the jinn.
The knight remembered what he had seen and heard in the temple, and asked who Shippeitaro was. The villagers said it was the name of a brave dog who belonged to a nearby prince. The knight went to the prince, explained the situation, and returned with the dog. He put the dog in a cage and dragged it to the jinn’s temple, where he waited until midnight. The phantom cats appeared with their leader, an enormous tomcat who screamed in delight at the sight of the cage. Suddenly, the knight threw open the cage door and Shippeitaro grabbed the giant cat in his teeth. The knight killed it with his sword. Then the dog chased away all the phantom cats, and the village was free.
There is an account from 1708 CE about a samurai and some very strange happenings in his house.89 Glowing balls of light, which no one could catch, bounced through the rooms, once even illuminating a tree in the courtyard.
The women servants began to be attacked by spirits while they slept. One young woman was particularly singled out; her spinning wheel turned by itself and her pillow would revolve like a top when she lay down. The samurai called upon sorceresses, Shinto priests, and Buddhist priests to rid his house of the demon spirits, but nothing worked.
Finally, one night when the spirits were especially active, the samurai went into the courtyard and happened to look up at the roof. A strange and sinister sight met his eyes. A very old cat was walking on its hind legs on the roof. Around its head was wrapped a towel belonging to the young woman servant. The samurai motioned to one of his guards, who shot the cat with an arrow. The hauntings in the house stopped immediately and never returned. This demon-cat was huge and had a split tail (called nekomata by the Japanese).
Another Japanese myth says that cats were created to hunt and kill the rats who bit off the devil’s tongue.
Ancient legends from Japan also include a tale of a Japanese bogeyman, a human whose name was Neko-Bake. This man was a sorcerer and a cannibal. In order to enter houses at night, Neko-Bake would take the shape of a cat. He was said to steal disobedient children and eat them.
The Chinese saw the cat as a shapeshifter, a nocturnal animal they classified as yin and associated with the powers of evil.
One early Chinese legend is the story of a cat owned by an emperor. After it had rained for three days, the cat went outside to bathe in a pool of water. Instantly, the cat was transformed into a dragon and flew away, never to be seen again.
In sixth-century China, they strongly believed in what they called cat-specters. When these cat-specters served a human, they could be sent to kill someone and then draw the dead person’s possessions to the person who sent them.
A story dated 595 CE tells of a young man named T’o, whose wife had a servant who served a cat-specter. T’o wanted money for alcohol and convinced his wife to send the cat-specter to the empress to bewitch her so she would bestow gifts on T’o. The empress became very ill but the physicians didn’t know what caused the illness. The emperor, however, was advised by his wise men that the empress was under the spell of a cat-specter. The only way to destroy this spirit was to kill the person who sent it.
In a short time, T’o’s female slave was again sent to the palace. But this time she was met by the emperor’s guards and told to recall the cat-specter at once or lose her life. The woman set out a bowl of rice gruel and drummed on the bowl with a spoon. When the cat-specter arrived, the woman became blue in the face and staggered about. Certain now of the culprit, the emperor was issuing orders for T’o and his wife to commit suicide, when T’o’s brother begged for the emperor’s mercy. T’o lost all his possessions and position; his wife was sent to become a Buddhist nun. The emperor immediately sought out all those who kept cat-specters and exiled them to remote parts of China.
It was a common Chinese belief of this era that people sometimes changed into cats at death in order to get revenge on enemies. One empress sentenced a court lady to death. “Fine,” replied the lady. “When I die, I will take on a cat form and come back and change you into a rat. Then I will kill you.” The empress changed her mind. The Asians have a saying that if you are afraid of or dislike cats, you must have been a rat in your last incarnation.
The Chinese also have a legend about tigers being able to recall souls after death. The tiger is supposed to have a certain hair in its tail that has the power to bring back the soul to a dead body, very similar to the soul being returned to the body when a vampire is made.
Celtic cultures rarely had friendly or helpful cats in their legends. The Celtic felines were described as Monster Cats instead. Perhaps this is because the only cat they knew was the untamable, fierce European wild cat.
In Welsh tales, the enchanted sow Henwen had originally been a human; actually, Henwen portrays an aspect of the goddess Cerridwen.90 Henwen, big with young, was tended by her keeper, a young man whose name was Coll. Because there was a prophecy that Henwen’s offspring would harm Britain, King Arthur set out to destroy her. He chased the sow down to Land’s End in Cornwall, but she swam out to sea with Coll hanging on to her bristles.
At each place the sow landed, she gave birth to three grains of wheat, one of barley, one of rye, three bees, a pig, a wolf cub, and an eagle. At last, Henwen landed with Coll at Arvon. There, under a black stone, she gave birth to a kitten. Coll immediately threw the kitten into the Menai Straits, where the sons of Paluc (from the Isle of Man) rescued it. It grew up to be the ferocious Paluc (sometimes called Palug) Cat, one of the Three Plagues of Anglesey, the Great Cat who could eat nine score warriors at one time. Sir James Frazer links the Palug Cat with the monster Chapalu of French Arthurian legend.
The Scottish Highlands are full of tales of elfin or fairy cats, known as the Cait Sith (pronounced cait shee). These are said to be black cats, as big as a large dog, with arched backs, erect hair, and white spots on their chests. However, the Gaels of the Highlands believed that the Cait Sith was a witch transformed into a cat, not a fairy. Another demonic cat who was even larger and more fierce was Big Ears, who only appeared when cats were roasted to death.
The cats on the Isle of Man are said to have their own king. By day, this king appears to be an ordinary cat, but at night he has terrible powers. If anyone mistreats him or his subject cats, the king will seek the person out at night and take a horrible revenge.
This French legend, found in the fourteenth-century manuscript called Le Roman de Merlin,91 begins with a man finding a black kitten caught in his fishing net. He took it home and fed it. Soon the cat was so huge that it strangled the fisherman and his family, then fled to the mountains where it terrorized the countryside.
King Arthur, with Merlin and his knights, set out to conquer this demon-cat. Through Merlin’s powers, they found its lair in a deep cave in the mountainside. The sorcerer whistled to get the cat out of the cave. It made one great leap at Arthur, breaking his spear into pieces. Arthur knocked the cat-demon to the ground with his shield, but its claws penetrated his armor and drew blood. Arthur attacked the cat again, but this time the creature sank its claws into his shield and wouldn’t let go. Arthur cut off the fore legs, but the great cat gripped him with its hind feet and bit his chest and shoulders until he was covered with his own blood. To win the battle, Arthur had to hack the great cat demon into pieces. Tradition says that Arthur disappeared after this battle, dying of the wounds inflicted by the cat.
An Irish story of a demon-cat is given in the works of William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory,92 originally published in 1888. Once there was a very lucky fisherman in Connemara. The man’s wife always had plenty of fish to sell, but a great cat came every night and ate the best fish. The woman was determined to catch this cat. While the wife and a younger woman sat spinning, the door flew open and in walked a big black cat. The creature made itself comfortable by the fire and growled at the women.
The younger woman jumped up and called the cat the devil. At this, the cat scratched deep gouges in her arm and warned her not to call him names. Then he barred the door and held the women prisoner. When the fisherman came and attacked the cat with a stick, the cat scratched his face and drove him away.
Spying the fish on the table, the cat selected the biggest and best and began to eat them. The wife hit it with a pair of tongs, but the cat only grinned at her. Then both women attacked it with sticks. The cat spat fire and scratched them until the blood ran down their faces and arms.
Finally, the wife got out a bottle of holy water and threw it over the cat. With an unearthly scream, the black cat dissolved into a thick cloud of black smoke with two fiery red eyes. When the smoke cleared, the only thing that remained was a shriveled body, and even that soon disappeared.
The Irish hero Cu Chulainn was attacked one night by three supernatural cats who only disappeared at dawn. Cu Chulainn hit one of the cats on the head with his sword but the blade rang as if it struck stone.
A legend about St. Brendan, a Celtic holy man, tells of a great sea cat. Brendan and his monks went in search of the Land of Promise and ran into a storm, which forced them to land on a rocky island. As they came ashore, an old man called out a warning to flee because of a huge, dangerous sea cat who lived there. The old man said the cat had come to the island with him as an ordinary kitten, but as soon as the cat began to eat the strange fish that washed up on the shore, it began to grow and change. It became huge and very ferocious, attacking anything that came near it.
As the old man told his story, Brendan and his monks heard a terrible yowl rise above the winds of the storm. They didn’t wait to see what it was, but jumped back into their boat and rowed away as fast as they could, leaving the old man alone on the shore.
When they were some distance from the island, they looked back. An animal the size of a small pony ran across the sands and leaped into the water. It was the demon monster cat. With powerful strokes, the cat easily paddled toward them, its great eyes shining “like vessels of glass” through the storm.
Frightened, the monks began to pray. Just as the monster cat reached a paw up to climb into the boat, a second cat just as big swam close and attacked it. The great cats screamed and hissed and fought in the roiling water while Brendan and his monks rowed swiftly away.
In the Kalevala of Finland, a collection of ancient Finnish tales, there is a story of a sorcerer who went into a house full of men and enchanted them. Then he threw the men onto a sledge, which was pulled by a huge cat. This cat swiftly took the men to the far-off limits of Pohjola, the Underworld, a place of darkness and evil spirits.
Spanish Hebrew folklore has a story blaming vampirism on Lilith, Adam’s first wife. Lilith was driven out of the Garden of Eden because she refused to obey all of Adam’s wishes. She changed herself into an evil witch and a vampire to get her revenge on the descendants of Adam. In her favorite disguise of a huge black cat, named El Broosha, Lilith was said to go about at night, sucking the blood of newborn babies.
The demon-cat, the cat serpent (Jormungand), the sea cat seen by St. Brendan, the Chinese cat dragon, the Celtic Paluc cat, and all the other forms of dark felines symbolize the Underworld and the power of death over life.
Eastern Europe has always had more tales of vampires and vampire-animals than any other area. Many people in this region still believe that if a cat walks or jumps across a corpse, any innocent dead person will become a vampire.93 This idea comes from the belief that the cat carries the “seed” or “germ” of vampirism, making it a potential vampire who can infect other creatures.
A story of cat-transferred vampirism was recorded in the seventeenth century in an area called Silesia. An older man died after he was kicked by his horse. As he drew his last breath, a black cat jumped onto the bed and violently scratched his face. After the funeral, the ghost of this man was seen by several people. Soon stories of bowls of milk being turned into blood, old men strangled, babies stolen, and chickens killed began to circulate through the town.
For six months, the strange incidences continued, until at last the villagers decided to dig up the dead man whom they believed to be the cause of their troubles. They found his body fresh and flexible, the eyes able to open and close. When they cut a vein in one leg, it bled freely. They hacked up the body and burned it. After that, the troubles ceased.
During the Salem witch trials in the US, a story of a demon-cat called Tailrings began to circulate. One of the accused women was named Strmantis, who foresaw her death at the hands of the Puritan torturers. Before they caught her, Strmantis killed a ring-tailed cat and stuffed its skin with straw mixed with certain magickal herbs. She substituted moonstones for its eyes and extremely sharp blades for its claws. Then she performed a ritual that would bring the cat to life whenever she spoke the final words of the spell, which she planned to do when the witch hunters came for her.
It wasn’t long before the Puritan witch hunters broke into Strmantis’ house. As they grabbed her, she screamed out the final words, and Tailrings got away through a window. It didn’t take her captors long to condemn and murder Strmantis. However, their troubles had just begun with Tailrings.
The cat began to exact retribution for the murder of its mistress and filled Salem and the surrounding countryside with fear. Hunters would see the glowing moonstone eyes as Tailrings watched them in the dark woods. The cat stalked, attacked, and slashed up one person after another. No hunter was ever able to hit Tailrings with an ordinary musket ball. After many years, the attacks by Tailrings grew fewer, until finally the cat was seen no more. Perhaps all the people responsible for the torture and murder of accused witches were dead by that time, and there was no further reason for Tailrings to exist.
The tales of demon and vampire cats, cats who haunt and persecute humans, and those cats who exact revenge for misdeeds against their kind may have originated from the ancient belief of the cat being associated with specific deities. Many of the gods and goddesses who were connected with the feline family often had darker sides to their nature. They were the impartial judges of human deeds and intentions; it was their duty to see that the scales of spiritual justice were balanced. The cat, or other feline member, was their instrument by which they exacted the justice due. A deep part of humankind remembers those beliefs and fears the retribution that could be levied against them.
88. Japanese cat-demons are all said to have forked or double tails, which gives them doubly strong powers of enchantment. Half a world away in Ireland, there are also legends of cats with two or nine tails. Originally, the cat-o’-nine-tails was a symbol of power and royalty.
89. This is found in a scroll called the Yamato Kwai-I ki.
90. The Welsh goddess Cerridwen, an aspect of the Crone, had a fierce, unpleasant side.
91. Patricia Dale-Green, Cult of the Cat.
92. A Treasury of Irish Myth & Folklore. This same story is told in Folk Tales of the British Isles, edited by Kevin Crossley-Holland.
93. The same belief exists in many Celtic countries as well.