History of Cats – Part 4

Posted by Jeanne on June 1, 2009

The Cat in America

The cat came to America with the colonists, and it seems fair to say that she contributed her share to the civilizing of the wilderness by her never-ending war on rodents and vermin.

By World War II she was a well-established institution. There was hardly a single military base or depot that did not have its faithful mousers. She worked in factories and shipyards and in air and railroad terminals. Cats accepted for combat duty sailed with the Navy, flew with the Air Force and the Marines, and walked with the troops, who were, however, always described as dogfaces. Individual cats achieved fame by surviving long hours on a life raft after being torpedoed, by being enclosed in packing cases and surviving sea voyages halfway around the world, by being decorated for honorable service to the Allied cause.

In the war zones, of course, she again suffered enormous casualties, and her greatest feat was in managing to survive there at all.

At survival, to be sure, she has always been expert. She has seen to this by retaining the ability to forage for herself and for her young. It may be less necessary for her to do so these days, but there are few cats foolish enough to forget how to do it. Experience has taught that there are few certainties in a man-sized world.

Serenely self-sufficient and magnificently independent, she can reflect – if she thinks about such things at all – that her lot generally has improved and is improving. She does not enjoy the adulation that was showered upon her in the good old days in Egypt, but neither is she running for her life before a howling mob bent on doing her in.

Her enemies actually are few and quite civilized. Aside from the people who “just don’t like cats,” there are some bird-lovers, some dog-lovers, the sufferers from cat allergies, and perhaps a few mouse-lovers.

Meanwhile, the ranks of her friends are growing. The groups that historically have been her companions have been swelled by the tide that sweeps all before it: children. And, unofficial observation of suburban America suggests that many families that lack the acreage to keep a dog active and happy are acquiring and enjoying cats.

There is, of course, a large uncommitted population that doesn’t dislike cats but doesn’t like them, either. Perhaps the last vestiges of cat superstition are at work here. Old beliefs die hard, and there still are folks who will say that cats can read the human mind and see things invisible to man.

Our language, too, is filled with unfavorable references to cats that long usage has given the ring of truth. The catty person is spiteful and malicious. The cat’s-paw is a dupe. The copycat appropriates others’ ideas. To pussyfoot is to be evasive, indirect. The catcall is derisive. Only the jazz world has cast a small affirmative vote by coining a term for the alert and knowing person: hep-cat.

Generalities – good or bad – have never impressed the cat, however. She is an utter realist, no philosopher, and very much a she. Considering the swaggering virility of the tomcat, there may be room for argument here. But, on balance, it seems, in human eyes, that the feline personality is feminine. (Only the French, usually so perceptive in these matters, disagree. Le Chat: is masculine.)

Like most females, she is confident of her capacities and aware of her limits. She has no brag or bluster; she never overextends herself. Yet she faces life unflinchingly, knows what she wants and how much she is willing to put up with, or forgo, or insist on, to get it.

She is various. She is complex. She is intriguing. She is cat.

History of Cats – Part 3

Posted by Jeanne on May 25, 2009

The Fall From Favor

Medieval man, however, whatever his glories, peered at his world through a fog of superstition. He believed that demons and witches walked abroad and saw their evil hand at work in the misfortunes that befell him. He was also close enough to the earth to believe that nature was inhabited by spirits, hard to please, and easy to offend, who could help or harm him. And, so he built his cathedrals, aspiring to the one God for whom the new Church spoke, and feared the Devil’s legions who showed themselves so often and in so many guises in his daily life.

Man’s ceaseless struggle with himself is often felt by innocent bystanders and few such have suffered more brutally than the cat. In Europe, as in Egypt, the cat fared well at first. In time, she even became an object of worship. In the German states, particularly, cats became associated with Freya, the goddess of love and fertility – a sort of north-country Venus – and a team of them was believed to haul her chariot around Valhalla. Obviously, whoever wove this little fable together had had very little experience with cats.

Eventually, the rites of the Freya worshipers became outrageous, and a wrathful church cracked down. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII directed the Inquisition to burn the heretics as witches – and their cats.

The human slaughter was appalling. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, more than 100,000 witches were executed in Germany alone and another 75,000 in France. With them perished countless thousands of cats.

Once the cat was thought to have supernatural powers. No misfortune was too small to blame her for, and no means was too severe to exterminate her. The folklore abounded with horror stories, bizarre, incredible, and devoutly believed. The normal, night-prowling cat looking for mice became a witch, transformed by incantations to the Devil, and bent on evil errands. She soured milk, spoiled crops, brought illness, caused afflictions.

Throughout Europe cats were burned, boiled, impaled, hanged, flayed, gutted, buried alive, dropped from towers, stoned, and stabbed with righteous fervor and pious fear. The whole gruesome performance was not only sanctioned but raised to the level of religious significance by being incorporated into the celebration of holy days. Many a Shrove Tuesday, Lenten Sunday, and Easter in those times rang with the screams of tortured and dying cats.

(It is interesting to note that less than 300 years after her arrival the cat also had fallen from grace in Japan. From being the pampered pet of the rich, she had become an evil demon in legend and folklore.)

The survival of the cat seems to have been due to her own resourcefulness and to the courage of her few remaining human friends. For it was literally worth a person’s life to own a cat when the murderous frenzy was at its height. Old ladies in particular needed only to keep a cat to convict themselves of witchcraft.

Millers and sailors stayed loyal to their small helpers, to some degree; some tough old dames managed to protect their hearthside companions; and writers and statesmen began to be numbered among the folks who traditionally and fundamentally liked cats. Some of these, fortunately, were quite influential. The great political cardinals, Wolsey of England and Richelieu of France, both had a succession of pet cats and were neither bewitched nor bedeviled.

It is impossible to estimate how much this kind of support helped. By the eighteenth century, the tide had begun to turn once more in favor of the cat.