The cat and the darkness!

"…She's into superstitions, black cats and voodoo dolls", sang Ricky Martin. He’s not the first; since ancient times, few animals have been as loved and as loathed as the cat. They are surrounded by myths and superstitions, ranging from the ridiculous to the terrifying and not without reason. Unlike other domestic animals that can be trained and are generally loyal & friendly, cats seem to have a mind of their own. And if you own a cat, can you truthfully say that you have never seen it give you a condescending look as you scurry around. In fact according to a Chinese legend, the Gods had chosen the cats to rule the world and had even given them the power of speech, but the cats wanting to laze around and not work, passed on the powers to humans.

Cats have an uncanny ability to make humans nervous, and that too an inopportune moments. They have a habit of stiffening their bodies and peeping onto the distance as if they have spotted something not visible to the normal eyes. This led our ancestors to believe that cats were capable of seeing spirits. Soon they were also being credited with the ability to foretell the weather and according to an Indonesian legend, even controlling the rain.

Although the awe and fear apply to all cats in general, it is more so with black cats. The likeliest reason is that the colour black has always been associated with the colour of the night, which is when evil is said to abound. Black is also symbolic of, amongst other things, power, sexuality, sophistication, wealth, mystery, bad luck, misfortune, fear, emptiness and mourning (as in during funerals). And the most evil type of magic is ‘back magic’. It is thus not surprising that in most parts of the world, black cats are considered harbingers of evil.

Cats have been connected to the Gods, the devil, witchcraft, religion and the supernatural for centuries and across cultures. The superstition was strengthened by incidences like that of the king of England, Charles I, who owned a black cat and was so afraid of losing it that he had it guarded. He was arrested on the day after it died and was executed soon after. But generally in Britain and Australia, black cats are considered to be a symbol of good luck and some people even consider white cats to be unlucky (looks like we should send all those unlucky black cats there).

Some more common superstitions about cats
- If a black cat crossed your path, you would have good or bad luck, depending on local customs and beliefs.
- To reverse the bad luck of a black cat, which has crossed your path, a simple solution was to walk in a circle, then go backward to the spot where it happened and count to 13.
- Cats were believed to be either witches in disguise or their helpers.
- They were also thought to have demons and spirits residing in their bodies and thus have supernatural powers.
- It was also believed that spirits could return by possessing a cat’s body and only an evil spirit would occupy the body of a black cat.
- To see a black cat after midnight was to see Satan himself.
- A cat sitting on a grave meant that the dead person’s soul was possessed by the devil, while two cats fighting on a grave meant that the devil and the deceased person’s guardian angel were fighting for the soul.
- In Ireland, a black cat crossing your path in moonlight meant death by epidemic.
- It was also said that if a black cat left a house, misfortune would befall its occupants.
- Dreaming of a black cat meant a warning about something unfortunate that was about to happen.
- If a black cat came into a house or onto a ship on it’s own accord, it was considered to be a very good omen and the cat was never to be chased away, lest it take the luck away with it.
Fishermen & sailors, who are always very superstitious, had a lot of cat related beliefs.
- For instance, it was considered very lucky to have a cat on board, especially if it was completely black.
- Also if a cat ran ahead of a sailor on the dock, it meant good luck, but if it crossed his path, it meant disaster.
- Also it was believed that a sailor would have good luck if the ship’s cat approached him, but if it turned back midway, it meant bad luck.
- A guaranteed way to raise a storm in the sea was to thrown a cat overboard
- Wives of sailors and fisherman would keep a black cat at home so as to ensure that their husbands would avoid danger at sea, this led to black cats being stolen.

There is absolutely no scientific basis to prove that cats can influence luck. In fact an experiment conducted by Mark Levin proved that neither a black nor a white cat produced any drastic change in the subject's luck.

But in spite of any evidence to the contrary, the superstitions about cats is so ancient and so ingrained in our psyche that it will be centuries before the cat is considered to be completely innocent. Of course knowing cats, I don’t think they would like that. As someone said, ‘Cats were treated like royalty once, and they remember’.