About one third of all households in the United States have pet cats, making them second only to dogs in terms of pet popularity. Yet cats, and especially black cats, are often maligned and feared due to their historical association with witches.
Superstitions concerning both cats and witches hold marked places in the human imagination, and especially around Halloween, both are ubiquitous in the decorations and lore of the season.
While it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact origin of this association, it seems to have arisen primarily in Europe in the Middle Ages, most likely resulting from the efforts of the Catholic Church to purge society of what it considered paganism.
Among the many targets of the Inquisition, a series of Catholic judicial institutions established to prosecute heresy, was witchcraft. During that time, many people, mostly women, were imprisoned, tortured, and even executed due to accusations of witchcraft.
But why are cats associated with witchcraft? Some people point to a proclamation in June 1223 by Pope Gregory IX, known as the “Vox in Rama.”
In addition to calling on church officials to root out witchcraft, the decree also detailed the ceremony used to initiate new witches into a coven. One aspect of the rituals included witches paying homage to a black cat. So almost 800 years ago, black cats became associated with witches, at least in the eyes of the Catholic Church.
During this period, cats also became associated with witches in the popular imagination. They were often believed to serve the witches as their familiars, or supernatural beings who assisted the witches in their practice of magic. Some people even believed that witches actually transformed themselves into cats in order to sneak around at night. Even one of the witches in Shakespeare’s MacBeth had a cat as one of her familiars.
Of course, it’s also possible that the fear associated with cats predates these religious persecutions. Certainly, there was a time when humans contended with cats, especially large cats, for their very survival. They are, after all, among nature’s most effective and deadly hunters. So, that innate fear possibly lingers to some degree in the human subconscious.
The Mysterious Nature of Cats
Additionally, cats are naturally mysterious. At times they are affectionate, purring and wanting to be held and petted, and at other times they are aloof and withdrawn.
Sometimes they will hole up in some hidden location within the house, behind the washing machine or in a cabinet somewhere, and other times they will wander off into the neighborhood and not return until they get hungry several days later.
And black cats are considered especially mysterious, because their color allows them to blend with the shadows at night, seeming to appear out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly into the darkness. While there are biological reasons for these features, mostly having to do with nighttime vision and depth perception for hunting purposes, it’s also understandable that some people subconsciously associate black cats with a fear of darkness.
Cats in Modern Popular Culture
Like witches, cats continue to hold a unique position in popular culture. Just as there are often considered good witches and bad witches, cats are also portrayed in both positive and negative ways.
In the early part of the 1900s, Felix the Cat was one of the most popular cartoons of the silent-film era, and in 1927, he was the first character ever honored with a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan.
Later, in the second half of the 1900s, the lasagna-loving cat called Garfield was among the most popular comic strips in newspapers across the country.
Yet at the same time, cats, especially the black ones, continued to be portrayed in movies and literature as consorts of witches and mysterious possessors of supernatural powers.
In any event, the relationship between humans and cats is long and complicated, to say the least. To some people, they are mysterious beings with seemingly supernatural powers, while to others they are simply lovable house pets.
