Pets Magazine November 2018

Who’s Afraid
of Black Cats?
“… a remarkably large and beautiful
animal, entirely black, and sagacious
to an astonishing degree.” ― Edgar
Allan Poe, The Black Cat
DR DAVID CLIFF, of Gedanken, a company specialising in coaching-based
support and personal development, looks at the fascinating mythology and
superstition that has surrounded black cats for thousands of years....
As the proud owner of a black cat,
it is always puzzling to see
advertisements from cat shelters
and other animal rescue centres
that seem to show how black cats
are the hardest to rehome.
Why a feline noir should be so
difficult to place is a complex inter
play of superstition, aesthetics
and cultural perspectives, which
gives the poor old black moggie a bit of a hard time.
The ancient Egyptians prized all cats; indeed, the
ancient Egyptian God Bastet was the goddess of
warfare in Lower Egypt and was depicted as a black,
cat-headed woman who was the defender of the
Pharaoh.
Unfortunately, poor Bastet, or Bast as she was called
in various manifestations, would give way as Upper
and Lower Egypt unified to Seckmet, who although a
cat, was associated with menstruation and medicine
as well as war and vengeance. With this, the links
between cats and females began to increasingly grow.
The Egyptians so loved their cats that any harm to
them was considered a severely punishable offence.
The revered moggies were mummified in their
thousands; sadly few examples of these now exist as
Victorian entrepreneurs chose to use the mummified
corpses as fertiliser!
In Celtic mythology, the black cat was considered to
be evil and was sacrificed, despite cats as a group
being regarded as magical.
The full-blown assault on black cats however, took
place in the middle ages when the Christians began
to associate cats with witchcraft and Satanism, often
seeing accused witch as having a “Familiar” or even,
the cat itself being a transformed witch.
Vet
Pets Magazine