The black cat and the magical power

Throughout most of their association with man, cats – black, white, tabby or tortoiseshell – have been valued for their service. Though there are no written records, it is assumed as man began to engage in agriculture, stores of grain attracted rodents, which became prey for the cat.

In ancient Egyptian times, the value of a cat that could catch rats was codified and strictly enforced. If accidentally or unintentionally killed, a practicing feline ratter was worth a mound of grain as tall as the cat held up by its tail. Kittens were often promised to owners as soon as they were born and when a cat died, family members shaved their eyebrows in mourning. Affluent cat owners formally mummified and buried their companions. It was the golden age of the cats. Among powerful Egyptian deities was Bastet, a cat-headed goddess who represented the sun's life-giving warmth.

Despite laws forbidding export of these exceptional guardians of the granaries, enterprising traders smuggled domestic cats into other Mediterranean countries. As the Roman Empire conquered Egypt and other kingdoms, advancing armies brought the indispensable cat. Soon even the isolated and backward British Isles valued the ratting cat as equal to a foal, a calf or a pig.

No distinction was made regarding color, although most cats depicted in early art were tabbies, probably because the tabby pattern inherited from the cat's wild ancestors is dominant over all other color and patterns. At some point in feline evolution, a mutation occurred allowing the cat to hide its tabby pattern, giving us the first solid-colored cats. Man began to record the existence of black, white and even gray-blue varieties.

The Roman Empire eventually succumbed to internal divisions, leaving in its wake a powerful new entity, the Christian church. The cat often fell victim to the church's passion to stamp out pagan religions. Idolatrous worship was condemned.

The church believed certain individuals, usually women, were servants of the devil who often appeared in the form of a black cat. Witches were suspected of assuming the feline form to escape detection or perform gruesome acts. During the Middle Ages (600 to 1300 AD), witch hunts were common and black cats were often tortured and burned.

From this period of history, we get our association of the black cat with Halloween and bad luck. Personally, I see no harm in black cats, and people during the Middle Ages also believed in a flat earth and more nonsense... I, like many others, travel safely around the world, without being scared of falling of. And the same go's for black cats, when I see one of this cats I cannot stop thinking what your forefathers had to suffer from stupid uneducated people....