CAT FAMILIARS
“Ah! cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we can be aware of. It comes no doubt from their being so familiar with warlocks and witches.”
—Sir Walter Scott
During the Middle Ages, the old religions of Ancient Greece and Rome, and of pagan Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany, gave way to Christianity. The church was determined that it be the one and only religion, and so it took over sites sacred to other faiths. Churches were built where shrines, sacred woods, or sacred wells once stood, and many things connected with these earlier religions—especially the worship of the Goddess and nature spirits—were demonized.
We can see this clearly in the evolution of Freya, the Norse goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, fertility, and marriage, a sort of Scandinavian Aphrodite with traces of Bast. Freya was also a warrior goddess. After a battle, she led the god Odin’s handmaidens to the battlefields so they could choose the most valorous among those slain and lead them to Odin’s hall, Valhalla. It was Freya’s right to claim half of those who had died and bring them to her hall, Sessrumnir, a heavenly afterlife where the dead warriors experienced so much pleasure that wives and sisters were said to join them in battle, hoping they’d also wind up in Freya’s hall. (Those chosen for Valhalla would have to get ready to fight all over again in Ragnarok, the great, final battle the Norse believed would result in the destruction of the world. Really, wouldn’t you rather go with the goddess?)
Freya had several ways of traveling, but her best-known was a chariot drawn by two cats. Some sources say these cats were black and others blue—which means gray when you’re talking cat colors. From what I can tell, when she came to take the dead to her hall, Freya always traveled via cat chariot. What fascinates me about this image is that instead of being the goddess herself, cats are now the vehicle of the goddess. They literally bring the divine to you, especially at the time of death. It’s through the cats that we meet the goddess and are taken by her to the heavenly realm. (Apparently, P.C. Cast was also fascinated by Freya’s cat connection. According to The Fledgling Handbook 101, Freya was one of Nyx’s vampyre High Priestesses—I should have known!—and the cats that pulled her chariot were her familiars in the same way Nala is Zoey’s.)
The Cat That Predicts Death
We may have a modern-day equivalent of Freya’s cats. Oscar, a cat who resides in a New England nursing home, is almost always found curled against a patient’s side in the hours before the patient’s death. According to a 2009 article published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Oscar seems to have an uncanny ability to “predict” death and to be there to give comfort to the dying. Perhaps like Freya’s cats, he is there to bring them to the Goddess.
During the Middle Ages, when the church became the preeminent political and religious power throughout Europe, Freya changed. In medieval German stories she was transformed from a beautiful goddess with long golden hair to a wrinkled old hag who was cruel and bloodthirsty. She became known as a witch. And cats, because they were sacred to Freya, became demons or witches’ familiars.
The term “familiar” dates back to the thirteenth century, when it was believed that a spirit—usually a demon—could embody itself in animal form to serve as a protector or companion to a human. The human was usually said to be a witch or a sorcerer who had used magic to summon the evil spirit, and the familiar often took the form of a cat. Familiars were supposedly psychically connected to the witch and helped her work spells. The belief expanded into the idea that witches could change themselves into cats, and any cat might be a witch’s familiar or even the witch herself. In medieval times, when people suspected of witchcraft were being tortured and burned at the stake, these beliefs were not a good thing for cats.
Many of those who were branded witches were originally priestesses of the cults that still worshipped the Goddess and nature spirits. Most were devotees of the moon goddess in one of her many forms and were considered “wise women,” who knew the healing properties of plants and herbs. When the church recast these priests and priestesses as sorcerers and witches, they also recast nature spirits, fairies, and elves as demons. Black cats, in particular, because of their connection with the witchy Freya, were considered omens of death.
The Marcaou
In France, some people believed in the demonic Marcaou cats, born to the Fairies, that would poison unlucky humans then wait by the dying humans’ beds to carry the spirits to hell. The Fairy queens themselves gave birth to Margotines, beautiful white courtier cats that could shape-shift into attractive young women and bewitch unsuspecting men as they slept.
To be anything other than Christian was evil. In medieval England, around a.d. 906, a cult called the Daughters of Diana was said to celebrate Sabbats four times a year. These were rituals connected with the moon and designed to bring fertility to humans, animals, and plants. To the Daughters of Diana, the moon was represented by her Egyptian symbol, the cat, and so these “witches” would dress themselves as cats. The church claimed that rather than just dressing as cats, they could change themselves into cats. They also claimed that the witches’ tabby cats would transform into coal-black steeds on which the witches would gallop along the country roads—when not riding broomsticks, of course. This cult of the goddess—along with its cats—was persecuted and wiped out.
The church was exceptionally clever and thorough in stirring up the terror of witches. They convinced people that these women (and occasionally men) had the powers of the moon and could control the tides and planting cycles, and even drive people to lunacy. Cats were said to share these powers, which made them equally evil and dangerous. In 1232, Pope Gregory IX formally decreed domestic cats diabolical.
The Casts touch on this in Untamed, when Aphrodite notes angrily to Sister Mary Angela that the church used to kill off cats for being witches and demons, and the nun replies, “Don’t you think that’s because cats have always been so closely associated with women? Especially those considered wise women by the general public. So naturally, in a predominantly male-dominated society, a certain type of people would see sinister things in them.”
What exactly was the church’s problem with women? It all goes back to Eve. It was Eve, the church literally believed, who tempted Adam to disobey God in the Garden of Eden. Women’s sexuality was considered a tool of the Devil, designed to lead men away from God and into sin. (The church has never been comfortable with sex unless it was sex for reproduction within the bounds of marriage.) You can see why goddesses—especially beautiful, sexual, pleasure-loving goddesses like Freya—were considered threats by the church. She was the embodiment of so many things that the male-dominated clergy hated and feared.
A Superstition with Nine Lives?
When I was growing up in the 1960s, a girl told me that our family had to get rid of our cat because it would suck the breath from my infant sister. The superstition is ridiculous, of course: the structure of a cat’s jaws makes it anatomically impossible for a cat to suck anything. But it’s an old and widely held belief that may go as far back as the stories of Lilith. According to a Jewish legend that became popular during the Middle Ages, Lilith was Adam’s first wife, who refused to obey him and so was cast out of the Garden of Eden and became a demon. Lilith, who was said to suck the life from infants as they slept, often appeared as an owl or a cat.
Despite the church’s longstanding antipathy for women and cats, things didn’t really come to a head for a few centuries. In 1489, Pope Innocent VIII wrote the Malleus Maleficarum (“Hammer for Witches”), which declared that children of Satan tended to turn themselves into animals, just as Satan had turned himself into a serpent in order to tempt Eve. The ecclesiastical courts soon began charging women with having turned themselves into cats. In 1596, in Aberdeen, Scotland, a group of women were accused of being witches who had turned themselves into cats, allegedly to celebrate an orgy at a place called Fish Cross, named for a cross that stood in the middle of a
fish market. Somehow, it never occurred to the church authorities that the orgy-seeking “witches” might have been actual cats drawn to the area by the smell of fish.
It was between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, however, that the Christian world became positively obsessed with the fear of witches. Nearly every unfortunate occurrence was blamed on them—lightning, disease, fire, hail, even shipwrecks. In 1607, Isobel Grierson was burned for witchcraft after a man claimed that she entered his house disguised as his own cat, but accompanied by other cats that were all caterwauling, nearly scaring him and his wife to death. (Was it possible his cat was in heat and followed by toms?) Poor Isobel was then accused of visiting another man’s house in cat form and spraying his wife. This woman later died, obviously because she had been sprayed by Isobel. There are, in fact, a remarkable number of accounts of men who saw women change themselves into cats and men who claimed to be wounded by cats. And there are also quite a number of confessions from witches claiming they became cats, but it’s nearly certain that most of these were obtained under torture. One woman in England was hanged because a neighbor saw a cat jump up onto her windowsill, and was convinced it was the devil.
Reading the history of cats in Europe can give you nightmares. As victims of the witch hysteria, cats were put on trial and convicted, whipped, burned, boiled, drowned, and walled-in alive. They had gone from being creatures who were worshipped as gods to creatures that, because they were linked with the Goddess, were feared and destroyed.
That Old Black Magic
During this period, there were people who were actually practicing black magic, and they, too, killed and tormented cats and used feline body parts in their spells, giving some truth to the church’s claims. These devotees of the black arts believed that the cat’s ability to see spirits was contained in some part of their body—usually the eyes or skin—and that ability could be transferred to a human if the human ate the body part or wore it as a talisman. Sometimes, in an effort to gain this “second sight,” the ashes of burnt cats were ground into an ointment and applied to the eyes, or the cats were simply offered as sacrifices to the gods of darkness. Even as recently as 1923, the British occultist Aleister Crowley, a sadist who hated cats, was believed to have transfixed a cat through magic and then sacrificed it in a ritual to cure his hepatitis.
I know. This all sounds gross beyond belief, but it’s not that different from what’s still going on in Asia. One reason that tigers are currently endangered is that poachers are killing them in order to sell their body parts for potions that are supposed to do everything from strengthening bones to curing arthritis to working as an aphrodisiac.
What finally put an end to the persecution of cats in the West—and it took centuries—was the realization that cats were essential in stopping the waves of bubonic plague that were devastating Europe. It wasn’t understood then that rats and mice carried fleas, which spread the plague. Gradually, though, people began to notice that there weren’t as many deaths in households with cats, and they finally made the rat-flea-disease connection. After that, cats were considered invaluable in the fight against the plague. Even the church had to acknowledge this and finally put an end to burning them.
Yet even throughout these times when cats were so widely feared, beliefs in cats as beneficent creatures with mystical powers that allowed them to predict the future or bring good luck remained. Throughout the British Isles, a cat sneezing or washing itself behind its ears with a wet forepaw was a sign of rain; a cat sitting with its back to the fire, a sign of coming frost. It was also said that a black cat would bring a maiden her lover, and that a cat sneezing on a wedding day was a good omen for the bride. Traces of beliefs in magical “helper” cats can still be found in the European fairy tales. Check out Charles Perrault’s “Puss in Boots” or Madame d’Aulnoy’s “Queen Cat” (also known as “White Cat”) in which courtly, elegant cats are not only lucky but save the people they love from misfortune. In the South of France, people believed in Matagot, or “magician” cats that would bring prosperity into a house where they were loved and wellcared for (though according to one French fairy tale, “The Black Cat,” all cats are magicians). Some stories claim that the Matagot were enemies of the demonic fairy cats, the Marcaou, but more typical are good-luck stories, like the popular tale of “Dick Whittington and His Cat.”
MAGICAL CATS IN OTHER CULTURES
“Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes?”
—Theophile Gautier
It wasn’t only the medieval Europeans who believed that cats were magical. In Islamic lore, the djinn were supernatural creatures who could take the form of animals, and frequently appeared as—or lived inside of—cats. Having free will, djinn could be good or bad. Sometimes they brought their humans wealth and good fortune; other times, they tormented them. Humans seemed to gain a djinn’s help either by making offerings to them or enslaving them. (The “genie” in the story of Aladdin’s Lamp is an example of a djinn.) However, treating a djinn badly could result in the djinn taking revenge. The ancient Persians were reluctant to kill cats, fearing there might be a djinn inside. If they killed the cat and freed the djinn, the djinn were likely to spend eternity avenging themselves on the one who’d destroyed their habitat. An old Egyptian legend warns that a djnn takes the form of a cat in order to a haunt a house.
The First Cat
Islamic lore also gives us a lovely legend that traces the origin of cats to Noah’s ark. The story goes that the two mice on the ark were reproducing so quickly that Noah soon had a serious problem. So he went to the female lion on board and passed his hand three times over her head. She then sneezed out a cat—undoubtedly the ancestor of Zoey’s sneezy cat Nala—and the mouse problem was soon solved.
Another legend says that the Prophet Mohammed so loved his own cat Muezza that he blessed her, giving all cats the ability to land on their feet when they fall, and giving them all a permanent place in the Islamic Paradise.
In Mesoamerica and South America, jaguars are believed to able to travel easily between our realm and the spirit realm. Because of this, the jaguar is considered a kind of familiar, a spirit companion of great strength known as a nagual. During shamanic rituals, when the shaman enters the spirit realm—usually to heal others—he calls on his nagual to protect him from evil spirits and to fight any evil that might threaten him or those he’s trying to help. During these spirit journeys, the shaman shape-shifts, taking the form of the jaguar in order to cross over into the spirit realm.
In medieval China and Japan, cats were also accorded mystical powers. Cats are believed to have been smuggled into China from Egypt as early as the third century. It took another 600 years for them to show up in Japan, where they were imported from China and Korea. Cats got mixed reviews in these countries. It seems most of the folklore about them depicts them as demons—stealing from humans, shape-shifting from cat to woman and back again, wielding dancing balls of fire, and frightening people by walking two-legged across their roofs. There were also spectre-cats—the ghosts of cats—that delighted in haunting humans (though in Japan, tortoiseshell cats were believed to keep ghosts away. Go figure!). In China it was believed that after death humans turned into cats. Carl VanVechten tells of the Empress Wu, who decreed that no cats could enter her palace after she executed a court lady who had “threatened to turn the empress into a rat and tease her as a spectre-cat” (a story that can be found in Carl Van Vechten’s The Tiger in the House).
In Japan, some cats were believed to be goblins and others, protectors against goblins. The famous story “The Boy Who Drew Cats” tells of cats painted on temple screens who came to life to defeat a giant rat goblin. Japanese cats also had a reputation for turning into beautiful women, who sometimes helped their owners—one story tells of a cat who turned into a geisha to earn money for the impoverished old couple who owned her—and sometimes turned out to be demons. Long-tailed cats, in particular, were considered capable of
turning into demons, and one Japanese demon, the nekomata, was said to be an enormous cat with a forked tail.
Long Before Dracula . . .
“The Vampire Cat of Nabeshima,” which dates back the Sengoku Era (1568-1615), tells of the Prince of Hizen, who had a beautiful consort named O Toyo living in his household. One night an enormous cat (with a normal tail) appeared in O Toyo’s bedroom, sprang at her, and crushed her throat in its teeth until she died. The cat dug a grave beneath one of the verandas and buried O Toyo’s body. It then shape-shifted, taking on O Toyo’s form. The prince never realized that his lover was dead. Night after night, the false O Toyo came into his bedchamber and drained the blood from him. The prince soon became sickly and weak and suffered from terrifying nightmares. He had no idea that he was sleeping with a vampire instead of his beloved consort. The prince’s retainers guessed that something was attacking him at night, but whenever they kept watch over him, they fell asleep—bewitched by the vampire cat. Eventually, with the help of a priest, one of the prince’s young retainers managed to stay awake and fight the false O Toyo, who turned back into a cat and vanished into the mountains.
(A more complete version of this story can be found in Tales of Old Japan, by A.B. Mitford [1871]. It’s also posted online at www.sarudama.com/japanesefolklore_vampirecat.shtml.)
Despite the apparent risks, oriental cats were kept for their hunting ability and their beauty. When cats were introduced to Japan sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries, they were first kept as exotic pets that only the wealthy could afford, but they soon began to earn their keep. Silk was one of Japan’s most important industries, and mice were eating the silk worms, as well as the grain stores. Cats were the solution to both problems.
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