Secrets of the Cat_ Its Lore, Legend, and Lives - Barbara Holland [56]
The Devil in the Middle Ages was a main character in life. Everything unexplainable or unlucky or theologically unorthodox was his doing, and in his carvings and drawings he got increasingly ugly. He had cat’s ears. He rode on a black cat. Devil cats held dances, and a black cat led them. The head cat was always black, the color of evil. Witches under torture confessed to worshipping the Devil in the form of a black cat.
Witches were not a myth either. They existed all over Europe, and met in secret covens, and worshipped in bizarre rites that were a surviving corruption of the more formal pagan ceremonies. Cats, especially black cats, were important in their rituals. Goats and cocks were involved on a regular basis too, and authorities point them out as equally demonic, but it’s worth noting that nobody held them responsible for their connections; no goat or rooster burnings were recorded. They were victims or accessories; cats were principals.
Men as well as women took part. In 1305 the Archbishop of Coventry was arraigned before the Pope for worshipping the Devil in the form of a cat. He was too important a figure to be burned at the stake, but my own feeling is that he was guilty as charged; you don’t accuse an archbishop of Devil worship without some evidence.
The fragments of decaying religions, practiced in secret, rot into unpleasant forms. There were complicated sexual orgies, and disagreeable rites in which the elect were allowed to kiss the anus of a black cat, animal blood was used extensively, and peculiar refreshments, like cat soup, were served.
In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull, “Against Sorcerers,” designed to stamp out these rotten scraps of paganism, and the witch hunt gained momentum.
As the modern concept of the witch began to take shape, old and unattractive women became strongly suspect. Spinsters were likely witches because in some of the myths Freya’s attendants were virgins. The young and the married were not exempt, however, and many a man turned in his wife for suspected midnight rambles. Dozens of stories tell of women who slipped out of their husbands’ beds to take part in diabolic rites, usually having changed their shape to a cat’s. It was no longer necessary to own or be seen with a cat, since it was well known that any witch could turn into one simply by rubbing herself with an ointment made from the fat of a black cat. In many of the stories, the errant woman gets hurt while in her cat form. A man or group of men stumbles on the cats at their wicked revels and wounds one, usually in the paw, and in the morning a local woman is seen with a limp or a wounded hand and burned as a witch. (Cats could change themselves into women, too, often for love of a man, but usually betrayed themselves by chasing mice.)
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, over a hundred thousand witches were executed in Germany, and seventy-five thousand in France. America, coming late to the game, convicted a mere two thousand of cat-related witchcraft. The dead cats were long past counting.
The Church found a new ally in the medical profession, which joined enthusiastically in the witch hunt. Witches and sorcerers, when in their human forms, claimed to cure diseases with herbs and spells, and given the state of official medicine at the time were probably safer and more effective than the doctors, who resented the competition.
Basically, any cat might be and probably was a witch, but certain tests could be made. A cat that showed reluctance or alarm when confronted with holy water or a crucifix was a witch, as was any cat that didn’t die immediately when you tried to kill it. A cat connected with or seen around a house where there was illness or injury, or even soured milk, was a witch. A cat found near fields where the crops were doing poorly was a witch. Any trouble involving a human baby was witchcraft and a death warrant for the nearest cat. In Hungary all cats between the