In a recent blog post, Geri Walton shares some of the numerous superstitions about cats, which date back at least to ancient Egypt.
“By the eighteenth century the cat had a solid reputation of being weatherwise and that then gave rise to much folklore about cats,” she says. For example, a cat washing its face suggested good weather. Bad weather was forecast when a cat licked her coat against the grain, washed her face over her ear, or sat with her tail to the fire. Sailors thought cats could affect the weather and believed that throwing one overboard would cause a storm.
Cats also could predict a happy marriage, as some believed that if a black cat followed a soon-to-be wed couple into a church, their marriage would be a happy one. And they were often associated with folk medicine. Some superstitions said that illnesses could be transferred from one animal to a cat, so the animal’s life would be prevented by the cat’s death. Another remedy was cutting off half the ear of a cat and letting the blood dripo on an infected animal. Other folktales suggest that cats can either cause or cure human diseases.
And of course, most of us are familiar with the belief that black cats are unlucky, demonic, or the familiars of witches. Which superstitions might provide some color – black or otherwise – for your story?
