Why are black cats considered bad luck? It's a long, bizarre story

When my daughter wanted to get a cat a couple of years ago, it was hard for me to say no.

My previous cat lived to be 16, and it had been a few years since the sound of trouble-making paws and lovable purrs filled our home.

However, her request was one I wasn’t immediately onboard with — she wanted a black cat.

Black cats are bad luck, right? They’re just for Halloween, aren’t they? You can’t let them cross your path, I had heard, or bad things will happen.

When we went to adopt a little black male kitten, he had made a friend at the shelter — a beautiful little black female kitten.

So we went home with two black kittens.

Ember and Earl were adopted at the same time. They are from different parents and are three months apart in age. However, you rarely see one without the other. In this photo, Ember is the one on the left.

They are such wonderful animals, and they look so regal with their shiny black coats.

It got me to wondering: why do black cats get a bad rap?

I had to piece together several sources as there's no definitive answer to the question, but this is the story as best I could put it together:

Black cat superstitions may have started with the Irish

The origins of Halloween are generally traced back to the Celtic festival of Samhain, a sacred celebration that marked the end of summer. It began somewhere around the ninth century.

While this festival did not originally involve witches and sorcery, the Celtic people did wear ghostly and ghoulish costumes to keep wandering spirits from bothering them by making themselves appear as spirits themselves.

The Cat Sìth, a large black cat with a white spot on its chest, was a magical creature associated with Samhain. Leaving a saucer of milk out for the Cat Sìth on Samhain was said to bless your home.

If the term Sith sounds familiar, you’ve probably heard it in Star Wars. Another all-black clad character was a Sith Lord — Darth Vader. He was misunderstood, too, right?

Sounds innocent enough. When did it get out of hand?

At some point between the ninth and 13th centuries, black cats were linked to witches in medieval Europe.

Things really went south when the church got involved.

When the bubonic plague devastated Europe in the Middle Ages, and cats ate the infected rats, societies believed that the plague originated with the witches and specifically black cats.

According to history.com, an official church document called “Vox in Rama” was issued by Pope Gregory IX on June 13, 1233.

“In it, black cats were declared an incarnation of Satan,” says Layla Morgan Wilde, author of Black Cats Tell: True Tales And Inspiring Images. “The decree marked the beginning of the inquisition and church-sanctioned heretic and/or witch hunts. Initially it was designed to squash the growing cult of Luciferians in Germany, but quickly spread across Europe.”

Really? The Pope believed black cats were linked to Satan? Yikes.

Apparently, the church thought cats, like the women accused of witchcraft, tended to disrespect authority.

OK, having been a cat owner most of my life, I can agree that cats shun authority. But I’ve never found myself doing Satanic rituals with my beautiful black kitties.

So, why is it bad luck for them to cross your path?

According to Mount St. Joseph University, a private, Roman Catholic university in Delhi, Ohio, “Believing that witches could take the form of their black cat companions, the superstition that a black cat crossing your path was bad luck materialized. This was due to the fear that the black cat in question might be carrying out a task of its witch, or worse than a witch, that it might be the devil in disguise. This fear continued into the Renaissance, where by then it was also believed that a black cat crossing your path was in fact sent by a witch to bring you harm.”

Riiiiight. Seems like a cogent explanation, doesn’t it??

When did this superstition make its way to the new world?

When the Puritan pilgrims came to the U.S. in the early part of 17th century, they brought this misled belief with them.

The belief was not only that witches existed but that they tended to keep black cats as pets.

It’s amazing what people made up back then. You’d never see crazy conspiracies like this nowadays with the truth-filled internet. (There’s clearly sarcasm in that last sentence.)

During the witch hunts and Salem witch trials, black cats were burned at the stake alongside the women accused of witchcraft.

Nothing funny about that.

Hold the catnip! The church may have profited from this?

I guess when the collection plate is bare, you have to get creative.

According to Cerridwen Fallingstar, Wiccan priestess and author of “Broth from the Cauldron: A Wisdom Journey through Everyday Magic,” a black cat crossing your path might have indicated that a witch had sent her to do you harm.

“Many fearful peasants of the day might have hurried to the nearest church and paid for a priest to bless them and rid them of any curse that might have been laid by the cat,” she says. “As this was a source of income for the church, such fears would have likely been encouraged.”

What else can you say?

It sounds like a 12-part miniseries for Netflix: “How a church scam profited from black cats and led to the murder of lots of women and animals.”

It’s up to us to change history

If we want to keep black cats part of the aura of Halloween, fine.

But let’s try to change the following trend: According to the National Library of Medicine, of all cats in shelters, black cats have the highest rate of euthanasia at 74.6%, and the lowest rate of adoption at 10% of any cat.

Even as kittens, those with a black coat are the last and least likely to be adopted compared to all other kittens.

“We certainly have an issue with getting black cats adopted. Our longest residents at the rescue are two black cats who have been here almost a year,” said Amanda Peck, shelter manager for Hope For Brevard cat rescue in Melbourne. “We don't know if it's the stigma of being ‘bad luck,' superstition or just a bias toward black cats. We call our black cats house panthers and believe every home would benefit from having at least one.”

With the odds already stacked up against them, the outlook for black cats finding a forever home is bleak.

“In June we had 20 black cats ready for adoption — 12 of them are still waiting for homes,” Peck said in early October. “In Asia and the U.K., they say you're going to be lucky in life if you own a black cat. We wish everyone here felt that way too.”

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