Superstition of the Week - Cats

Illustration from The Curious Curse, one of the featured stories in the debut issue of the Edible Raven, coming soon.

CATS

For thousands of years, cats have been regarded as mysterious creatures with supernatural powers and were associated with witches and death. In the Middle Ages, cats were held to be demonic. It was believed that witches could change into cats; in fact, they could make that change nine times.

Cats were said to help out sorcerers and midwives with their herbal magic, adding to their reputation as witches' helpers. Accused witches were usually single women – often widows – who probably kept the animals more for companionship than anything else. But village gossip made the relationship far more ominous. Witches changed their shapes, transforming themselves into cats. In a witch trial in Scotland, one supposed witch explained how the women managed this trick, saying that her coven assembled in human form to work their spells. As they gathered, the Devil appeared among them, shaking his hands above their heads and turning them into snarling four-legged beasts.

Across the Atlantic, the transformation theory was taken up during the Salem witch trials. As the local hysteria heated up, Sarah, the 7-year-old daughter of accused witch Martha Carrier, testified that "a cat, identifying herself as Martha Carrier, had carried her along to afflict people while her mother was in prison." Ultimately, Martha was convicted; along with four others, she was hanged on August 19, 1692.

The animal's habits and grace – prized today – didn't help her image either. Moving silently along, merging seamlessly into the gloom of night, the cat seemed to appear and disappear at will. While most people feared the darkness, the animal, with her natural nocturnal habits, seemed to seek it out. The cat's pupils – narrow slits in the daytime, but luminous globes at night linking them to the moon and emphasized their ability to see into the future. Her unearthly yowlings in the dark only added to her fearsome reputation. Some people believed that cats were the spirits of the dead.

If a black cat chanced to cross someone's path and through some trick of fate nothing happened to him, that, too, was a sure sign of the cat's complicity with the devil. That person was clearly protected by the King of Darkness.