The Cat is Adopted by Other Countries
Greeks and other travelers in ancient Egypt were impressed by the domestic and practical qualities of Egyptian cats. The high esteem in which all Egyptians, from peasant to noble, held their cats inspired the famous Greek historian and traveler Herodotus to include the animals in his anecdotal and encyclopedic histories. Book II of his work describes Egyptian customs and beliefs, in which the cat played an important role.
Such was the high regard and affection accorded the family cat that when a pet died, according to Herodotus, the family went into mourn-in for the lost animal. Each member of the family shaved off his eye-brows as a mourning symbol. Herodotus also mentions that cats were valued so highly that when a fire broke out, a family was more concerned about saving the cat than about extinguishing the fire. Un-doubted, Herodotus’ accounts and descriptions of the cat prompted the importation of felines into Greece.
Other travelers to Egypt brought back not only stories about the Egyptian cats, but some of the animals themselves. Phoenician sailors secured Egyptian cats and sold or traded them in countries along the Mediterranean. People in Rome, Greece and other southern countries which were plagued with rats and mice imported them in large numbers to exterminate the rodents. Later they began to develop their own varieties, and as the fame of the cat spread, more countries adopted the small felines as pets and hunters.
Oddly enough, the Bible makes no mention of cats, other than lions and leopards. Yet one wonders whether Noah didn’t include the cat when he took aboard the Ark specimens of all the birds and beasts.
The omission of the cat from the Bible is the more curious if we consider that the Hebrews were. Not only contemporaries of the cat-worshipping Egyptians, but even lived among them. It is possible that the authors of the Scriptures dismissed the cat because it was an animal used in alien religious rites; i.e., a sacred animal worshipped byte Egyptians. While the Mosaic Law lists a number of birds and animals as “unclean”, the cat does not even rate mention. On the other hand, the cat is mentioned in the Talmud, which may have been written about the same time as Genesis. In the Talmud, the cat is called, quite appropriately, the “pounce”, and reference is there made to its prowess as a hunter and its adaptability as a pet.
At any rate, by the fifth century A.D., the Persians and other Asiatic people were keeping cats as pets and rodent killers. Roman invaders are generally credited with introducing cats into the British Isles, although there is some evidence that cats were there before the Roman invasion. Regardless of when they arrived, cats were numerous and popular in Britain by the ninth century. By the year 1000 A.D. cats had gained favor as pets and hunters in China and Japan. Although Egyptian cats formed the basic stock in many countries, native species were also tamed and varieties developed in other lands. The hang pact of China, for example, is quite distinct from the sleek Mu of Egypt; the same is true of the Maine Coon Cat of New England.
In some of the more enlightened countries, the cat was given some measure of protection. Wales, Switzerland, Saxony and other regions of Europe enacted laws or issued proclamations protecting cats, and, prior to the Middle Ages, cat killers faced a stiff fine and possible imprisonment. An old Welsh law stipulated that the owner of a slain cat was to be compensated in the form of enough wheat to cover the cat’s body from nose to tail when the animal was held up by the tail, with its nose touching the ground. Wheat, of course, was a precious commodity and the amount prescribed in the Welsh fine or penalty was not always easy to obtain or surrender.
Unhappily, the cat fell into disfavor during the Dark Ages and there were years of torture and persecution for the once popular felines. Protective laws meant nothing to the gangs of cat haters that roamed the streets and alleys in search of victims, what was the reason for the wholesale slaughter of cats? Ignorance and superstition were the major factors.
Since the time of the pharaohs, when Egyptians worshipped the cat goddess Bast, men had regarded the cat as a creature endowed with supernatural powers. The Egyptians considered Mu to be a symbol of both good and evil, but in the Dark Ages, ignorant and superstitious people associated the cat exclusively with witchcraft and other evils. In the fourteenth century, old or eccentric women were accused of being witches and of assuming the form of black cats that ventured forth at night to spread mischief and evil. Consequently, both witches and cats were dragged before ecclesiastical courts and summarily con-demined to torture and death. Black cats were especially singled out as symbols of bad luck and evil, and these unfortunate animals were usually killed on sight.
The thoughtless and wanton destruction of cats produced an un-expected sequel—plagues affecting man and animal spread throughout England and Europe. One of the worst, the dreaded bubonic plague, was carried by rats. Thousands of people and animals died from this disease in the British Isles and on the Continent.
Since vast numbers of cats had been killed in the infamous cat hunts in England and Europe, the rats had enjoyed a population explosion. The increase in the number of rats, carriers of organisms that caused bubonic plague or “Black Death” as it was often called, produced corresponding increase in the number of cases of the plague. Although the science of bacteriology was as yet unborn, some people began to suspect that the rats had something to do with the spread of the Black Death. Happily—because they were notorious rat killers—cat’s grade-ally came back into favor.