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Cats in general have succumbed to some of the most hideous, nasty persecutions ever perpetrated on an animal. This torture and murder was done in the name of religion, and the black cat received the worst of the treatment. Even today, cat owners should beware around Halloween time, especially if they have a black cat. Such cats frequently become the target for mistreatment or death.
Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.
—Sir Walter Scott
Unfortunately, there are still people today who feel they should not be punished for torturing cats. In a recent news story, a science teacher in Braggs, Oklahoma, tried to force his students to remove the kidney of a stray cat. When the poor cat came out of the anesthetic during the procedure and started crying, the teacher walked out of the room, leaving the students to sew up the incision. One of the students took the cat immediately to a vet and then home to live. Students complained to the SPCA and the police, who were then forced to do something because of the publicity. When the teacher was cited with only a misdemeanor and given a five hundred dollar fine, local people raised the money, and the school board kept him on with no punishment whatsoever.66 However, torturing cats has become repugnant to enough other people that some states, such as Pennsylvania, are passing strong laws against such criminal acts.67
In the beginning of Christianity, there was really no trouble over cats. The church ignored the cat completely because of its association with Pagan religions; for example, the cult of Artemis (Diana), a goddess whom the church later taught was the consort of their devil. In fact, the church preached that witches and witchcraft were a fantasy product only of the mind.
There was no great problem about “devil” cats doing foul deeds for the Christian devil until medieval times. By the thirteenth century, people had lost so much faith in the Christian structure that the church began to look for a scapegoat and settled on witchcraft. The churches began to preach against the cat as a minion of their devil Satan, and anyone who associated lovingly with a cat was condemned as well.68 They declared the cat, particularly the black cat, to be associated with the foul rites of black magic and sorcery.
A witch prepares herself with flying ointment, her cat Familiar at her feet.
The term “witch” was applied to anyone who still believed in a Pagan religion as opposed to Christianity, especially women. The old Pagan religions honored women and allowed them to be priestesses, two things the church was against. Because the cat, owl, bat, hare, and wolf were animals of the Great Goddess, Christianity linked them with “witches” (priestesses and Pagan women). People came to believe that witches were automatically evil, and so were the animals linked with the Goddess.
Many people even believed that a witch could take on the form of a cat nine times during her lifetime.69 The image of a black cat flying through the night sky on a broomstick came from the same era. In Hungary, it was said that all cats between the ages of seven and twelve became witches. To prevent this from happening, people would cut a cross into the cat’s skin. The superstition that cats could become witches and vice versa was so strong that people would never speak ill of anyone in front of a cat, for it might be a witch in disguise. The hare was another animal form the witch could take.70 The people of Britain often confused the hare, sacred animal of the Saxon goddess Eostre, and the cat because they were both associated with Moon goddesses. In Scotland, the Goddess of Witches was called Mither o’ the Mawkins; however, the word mawkin or malkin meant either a hare or a cat.71 Gri-malkin (gray cat) became a favorite name for Pagan cats; gray malkins also meant the catkins on the pussy willow, whose blooming marks the Pagan rites in May.
The Christians went so far as to institute an annual ceremony on the Feast of St. John where they burned cats alive before the church doors. Black cats were especially sought for this ceremony because they were supposed to be extremely evil. This hideous practice soon spread to include the festivals of Midsummer, Easter, and Shrove Tuesday. To the Christians, the cat as minion of the devil could never suffer enough.72
In the thirteenth century, Pope Gregory IX issued a statement that the Cathars (break-away Christians) bred black cats, the color of evil and sin,73 which were of course the devil in disguise. Right after this declaration, the church declared a holy war against the Cathars, and any other persistent Pagan groups. The Knights Templar, a Christian order of knights created in the twelfth century, was also accused of worshipping the devil in black cat form. Like the Cathars, the Templars were accused, tortured, killed, and their rich property confiscated by the church.
This was one of the first “official” statements by the church that branded the cat, and black cats in particular, as Lucifer’s messengers. Anyone who associated with cats, especially black ones, was tarred with the same brush and called a witch and a servant of the devil.
The church appointed Inquisitors—all men—who had total authority over whom to convict, torture, murder, or set free. Very few of those accused of witchcraft were freed, as the inquisitor and all of those who helped him were paid through confiscation of the victim’s property and belongings. Being an inquisitor and a witch hunter became a very profitable business.
This seventeenth-century edition of Olaus Magnus’ Historia Gentium Septentrionalibus depicts witches raising a storm; the skull on the pole is probably that of a cat.
The inquisitor Nicholas Remy pronounced judgment that all cats were really demons, and by 1387 it was widely “known” that witches worshipped the devil in the form of a cat.74
During the Renaissance, in 1489, Pope Innocent VIII sent out an official order to persecute all witches and kill all cats within Christian lands. Pope Innocent was also responsible for commissioning the Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer for Witches), the so-called “bible” of the witch hunters. This evil book was actually written by two German Dominican priests, Jakob Sprenger and Prior Heinrich Kramer. The church was not only responsible for beginning this terrible persecution against cats and those branded as witches, but many priests and good churchgoers actively took part in the tortures and murders, all with the blessings of the church.
For the next three centuries, the European churches hunted and persecuted witches and cats from Scandinavian countries to Spain and at last into the Americas.75 This terrible practice continued until the seventeenth century, when Louis XIII ordered the persecution stopped in his country. However, at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I in England, the Protestants filled a wickerwork dummy of the pope with live cats, carried it through the streets, and then threw it into a huge bonfire.
As late as the fifteenth century, the Norse cults of Freyja and Holda (Hel) still flourished against every threat of hellfire the church could invent. During this time, Freyja was said to ride in a chariot pulled by twenty cats, while Holda was followed by a group of virgins disguised in cat skins. These Pagan groups met once a week, which probably cut into the once-a-week meetings of the church.
Soon, the church began its campaign against the Pagans who refused to join and support the churches. Church officials, who also saw great profit in Pagan lands, began to torture, hang, burn, and flay alive those whom they called witches, all in the name of saving souls. Drunk on their power, they did the same to cats. The law also condemned and punished in the same manner anyone who helped a sick or wounded cat, sheltered, or loved one.
During the infamous European witch hunts, witches and their cats were tried by a church court, automatically found guilty, tortured, and killed—usually by being burned alive. Although a few goats, toads, dogs, and other animals were said to be kept by witches, the most common accusation was against the cat.
A girl plays with her pet cats in this vignette from the Victorian era.
Anyone who owns an ordinary black cat (distinct from a pedigreed Black Shorthair or Bombay) will notice that the cat usually has white on it somewhere. This white can be a tiny patch of a few white hairs or only a white whisker. The reason for this goes back to that most infamous period of European history: the witch hunts. During the burnings of millions of humans, the totally black cat suffered the same terrible fate, dying by the thousands. However, any cat who had the smallest touch of white was spared, as it was considered to be “redeemed” and not consecrated to the devil. 76 Because of this destruction, the completely black cat became very rare, while those with a touch of white survived.
Part of the reaction to the cat in general may have come from those who knew its ancient sacred heritage, especially in Egypt. Another reason may have been its connection with Pagan people, particularly the independent Pagan women. Added to this is the cat’s uncanny ability to sense the true character of people and its refusal to become completely subservient to humans, like dogs. The church officials, playing on fear, said that the cat’s nocturnal wanderings and its screeching during the breeding season were signs of secret orgies and ceremonies with the devil.77
Because of the widespread destruction of cats during the witch hunt eras, cats were scarce when the Black Plague hit Europe. The fact of the matter is that the church and its paranoid ideas caused the death of millions of people, first through accusation of witchcraft, then through the plague, all because they had wantonly killed the very animal that could have killed the rats. At first the church encouraged the presence of rats in their dungeons. After all, they considered attack by packs of rats to be part of the legitimate torture of prisoners.
The first plague of black rats originated in Africa; they were stowaways in the ships of the first Crusaders returning from the Holy Land. Within fifty years, the rats had swarmed over all of Europe, spreading their deadly disease as they went. Fortunately, the Crusaders also brought back Palestinian cats, which helped control the rats. The cloisters, convents, and abbeys began to keep cats for protection against the rats.
Suddenly, the stronger, more prolific brown rat appeared in 1750. It quickly spread over Europe, from England to Spain and Egypt, and into the Americas by 1775. One of the first cases of plague recorded was in Napoleon’s army in Egypt in 1799.78 The rat population got so far ahead of the diminished cat population’s ability to kill them that it is still a major threat today. The rat’s lice and fleas still carry typhus, rat-bite fever, the plague, Weil’s disease, and trichinosis.
By the late seventeenth century, when most people regained their senses and stopped torturing witches and cats, the persecution of cats began to wane. However, a new danger to black cats arose.
Pagan wise women and men, who had been the doctors, had been killed in the witch hunts or gone underground, and a new and very dangerous breed of physician evolved: men, and only men, sanctioned by the churches.
These early so-called doctors believed that cats caused a number of diseases in the most ludicrous ways. Sixteenth-century physician Ambroise Pare believed that through a cat’s brain, hair, breath, and even its gaze, the cat could infect humans. According to Pare, even the cat’s breath was poisonous. Even into the 1900s, the French doctor Matthiole said that if you slept with a cat you would get consumption and that cats carried leprosy.
These “doctors” also declared that certain vital parts of cats, and particularly black cats, were certain cures for a great variety of illnesses. They came up with some of the most horrid, ignorant medical remedies using black cats that the world has ever known. A fresh skin from a newly killed cat was supposed to cure rheumatism, sore throats, and hives. To avoid sickness, it was recommended that you cut off the tail of a black cat and bury it under your doorstep. For blindness, the head of a black cat was burned to ashes; then the ashes were blown into the eyes. Nine drops of blood from a cat’s tail was mixed with nine roasted barley corns and the ointment applied to rashes.
There were also some hideous uses of cats during magickal rituals; these rituals were not performed by Pagans, but by Christians. One of these said to roast a live cat over a fire; its tormented screams would bring the King-cat,79 who was compelled to answer any question you put to it. This hideous method of divination was called taghgairm by the Scottish Gaels. One can only speculate as to why Christians continued to practice this barbaric method of divination well into the 1700s.
Although the Arabs were admonished to respect cats and never chase them from tent or mosque, the mysterious brotherhood of Siddi Heddi engaged in a disgusting practice. They would entice ownerless cats into their sanctuaries, fatten them up and, at a ritual feast every year, kill and eat them. This was in direct violation of the Moslem law against eating any carnivorous animal.80
The ancient Egyptians were among the first cultures to believe that cats had the ability to see spirits. The ancient Britons said that if you stared deep into a cat’s eyes, you would be able to see into the world of spirits. In the Gold Coast area of Africa, shamans wore cat skins around their necks; this was said to help them communicate with spirits.
It was not until the Victorian Era, in the 1800s, that cats once more became a popular household pet.
66. Spring 1996 Quarterly Journal of the National Humane Education Society.
67. It has been my personal observation that humans who torture cats have the capacity to do (and often do) the same to other animals and humans, especially spouses and children. This Pennsylvania law is ironic; in 1929 a Pennsylvania newspaper said that York County had no black cats because of a wave of witch-terror. The black cats were killed by throwing them into boiling water.
68. As late as the nineteenth century in Britain a woman was thrown into a pit simply because she had a black cat.
69. W. Carew Hazlitt, Faiths & Folklore of the British Isles.
70. Robert Briffault, The Mothers; James Frazer, The Golden Bough.
71. Potter & Sargent, Pedigree.
72. Frazer, The Golden Bough.
73. All black animals were automatically condemned as minions of the devil. In fact, the witch today is still associated with the black cat. Barbara Walker, The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols & Sacred Objects.
74. Richard Cavendish, The Powers of Evil.
75. In other countries outside the influence of the Christian church, cats were never persecuted and tortured. In the Eastern religions, for example, they taught the higher spiritual law of the unity of humans with all Nature and were more concerned with rewarding virtue than sitting in judgment.
76. Desmond Morris, Catlore.
77. For some reason, the Christian church has always been overly interested in sex, at the same time as they condemn it. Church officials of the time sweated their way through detailed sermons of sexual orgies by the devil and his cohorts and followers, while screaming against it. During the witch hunts, every condemned woman’s body was obscenely viewed and handled, all in the name of saving her soul. All this was really a way for some man to get his sexual “kicks” while doing the “good” work of the church.
78. Napoleon absolutely hated cats and refused to let one anywhere near his army and camp.
79. This King-cat was also called Big Ears.
80. Fernand Mery, The Life, History & Magic of the Cat.