Why are cats often depicted as the bearers of bad luck and ill omens? Is there a spiritual/religious reason why felines are viewed as untrustworthy? Thank you!
From a global history perspective, anti-feline sentiment and superstition is fairly new and geographically and culturally restricted. Until the Middle Ages, cats enjoyed a good reputation worldwide. The ancient Chinese valued cats as both rat-catchers and as pets. Celtic and Japanese cultures both considered tortoiseshell cats to be lucky. In India, the Hindu goddess Shashthi was depicted riding a cat, and the Norse goddess Freya got around in a cat-drawn chariot. Even the Greeks and Romans, who took a while to warm up to them, were eventually won over by the cats’ rodent-killing prowess and began to associate cats with Artemis/Diana [1,3,6].
There were some negative depictions of supernatural catlike beings before the Middle Ages. In Scotland, the cat-sìdhe, described as an enormous shapeshifting black cat with a white mark on its chest, was believed to steal the souls of the dead before they entered the afterlife. This danger necessitated rituals to protect the newly deceased, such as guarding the coffin overnight, keeping the room cold, and setting out catnip to distract the cat-sìdhe. Even then, cat-sìdhe could also be a source of good fortune if you left them a saucer of milk on Halloween [7,8]. Similarly, Japanese folklore describes the nekomata [猫又, lit. “repeating cat”] a giant two-tailed cat spirit that lived in the mountains and attacked unwary humans. They were believed to be domestic cats which had become nekomata with age and their tails would fork in two; eventually, they would gain the power of necromancy if kept to old age. Chinese tales about the senri [仙狸, lit. “wizard leopard cat”], a shapeshifting cat spirit that steals souls, may have been the original source of the nekomata story [6]. However, the malevolence of these cat spirits was not held against domestic cats as a species[1,3,6].
Early Christians, influenced by existing Mediterranean beliefs, transferred the association between Artemis and cats to veneration of the Virgin Mary [2, 3]. Particularly in Italy, cats were included in depictions of Mary and of the Holy Family; Italian folklore includes a tabby cat soothing the infant Jesus by climbing into the manger and purring. Cats were the only animal allowed in Eastern Orthodox temples, and the Russian Orthodox Church still performs blessings for cats, and cats inhabit Orthodox monasteries to this day [2].
Feline fortunes in Europe took a sharp turn for the worse in the 13th century. Heretic movements like the Waldensians had begun to gain traction, prompting wild fears about cults and Satan-worship to spread in Europe. Stories about devil-worshiping heretics started to include cats as agents of Satan. In his book De Nugis Curialium, Walter Map described the Devil as appearing to his followers in the form of a black cat and demanding to be kissed “under the tail” and his “privy parts”, and French theologian Alan de Lille accused the Cathers (a heretical Christian sect) of worshiping Satan in cat form. Engles speculates that these ideas may have been inspired by accounts of pagan cat-worship, but there is no clear historical source for the connection besides the fact cats playing with mice sometimes appeared in medieval Christian art as a metaphor for Satan tempting humans [2, 4].
Concerned about this rise in heretic activity, the newly elected Pope Gregory IX appointed Papal Inquisitors to suss out heretics through what he considered an orderly legal process. The Grand Inquisitor of Germany, Konrad von Marburg, was particularly zealous in his duties, throwing aside due process and inciting mobs to force suspected heretics to confess or face execution. He informed Gregory that his extrajudicial methods were necessitated by the sudden rise in Satan-worshipping cults in Germany, and provided details from heretics’ confessions, which included the allegation that part of the ritual for gaining cult admission involved kissing the “buttocks” of a black cat [1,2,5].
In response to the alleged proliferation of Satan-worship, Gregory issued the papal bull Vox in Rama, which included Konrad’s story about the black cat. This Papal endorsement of Konrad’s story indirectly encouraged the idea that cats-- particularly black cats-- were associated with witchcraft and Satan-worship [1,2,3,4]. English and Irish witch trials in the 14th through 16th centuries feature accusations that particular cats were the familiars of supposed witches [1,3,5,9] However, there is no evidence of widespread violence against cats as a result [5].
Sources