Black Cats: The History of the World's Most Persecuted Animal
Quick Answer
Why are black cats considered bad luck? The association between black cats and bad luck is largely a medieval European invention. Pope Gregory IX issued a papal document in 1233 associating black cats with devil worship, triggering mass persecution of cats across Europe. Before this, black cats were considered good luck across many cultures, including ancient Egypt, where cats were sacred. The UK, Scotland, and Japan still consider black cats lucky today. The "bad luck" version is a specifically American and continental European inheritance from medieval Christian superstition, not a universal human belief.
The history of black cats is a masterclass in how one institution's bad opinion can travel across eight centuries and become a thing people say without knowing why they're saying it. Black cats have been sacred, lucky, reviled, associated with Satan, and adopted at lower rates from shelters than every other cat color, all because a 13th-century pope had a problem with them. The pope is gone. The superstition is still here. The cats are fine about it.
Ancient Egypt: The Good Version
Cats were not merely tolerated in ancient Egypt. They were sacred. The goddess Bastet, protector of the home and of women, was depicted as a cat or as a woman with a cat's head. She was associated with fertility, motherhood, the protection of children, and the warmth of the sun. Cats were kept in temples, mummified for burial, and mourned by families who shaved their eyebrows when their household cat died. Killing a cat, even accidentally, was punishable by death. Exporting cats from Egypt was illegal, which did not prevent cats from spreading across the Mediterranean anyway via trade ships where they served as working pest control.
The specific reverence for black cats is documented: Bastet was associated with black cats in particular, and black cats were considered especially protective. This was not a minority opinion in a fringe culture. Ancient Egypt was one of the longest-lasting and most sophisticated civilizations in human history, and it spent centuries in enthusiastic agreement that cats were basically divine and should be treated accordingly.
Good Luck Everywhere Else
Egypt was not alone. In ancient Japan, black cats have been considered good luck for centuries, a belief that persists in Japanese culture today. A black cat crossing your path in Japan is a favorable omen, not a warning. In Scotland, a black cat appearing on your doorstep is a sign of prosperity coming to the household. In England, black cats were for centuries considered lucky, a belief that partially survives today: in Britain, receiving a black cat as a wedding gift was considered auspicious. British sailors considered black cats essential on ships, believing they brought favorable weather, and the cats were reportedly stolen from homes specifically for this purpose because the demand was so high.
The Norse goddess Freya, associated with love, fertility, and war, rode a chariot pulled by two large cats. Norse farmers left offerings for Freya hoping for good harvests, and being on good terms with cats by extension made a kind of practical spiritual sense. Celtic mythology treated cats with similar respect. None of these traditions survive in the headlines the same way the bad-luck narrative does, but they were considerably more widespread and considerably older.
Pope Gregory IX and the Papal Catastrophe
In 1233, Pope Gregory IX issued a document called Vox in Rama, addressed to the King of Germany, describing a heretical sect and its alleged rituals. The document described devil worship involving a black cat. Whatever the actual practices of the sect in question, the effect of Vox in Rama was to formally attach, through papal authority, the black cat to the devil in the European Christian imagination. This was not a theological footnote. It was official Church documentation linking a specific animal to heresy and demonic activity.
What followed was the systematic persecution of cats across Europe, with black cats bearing the worst of it. Cats were killed in large numbers, associated with witches, thrown from towers, burned in public bonfires, and incorporated into the growing machinery of the Inquisition as evidence of diabolism. If you had cats, and especially if you had a black cat, you had something that could be used against you by an inquisitor looking for signs of heresy.
The irony that followed was one of the more spectacular self-inflicted disasters in European history. Cats are the primary predators of rats and mice. Killing them in large numbers across a continent meant that the rat population, which carries fleas, which carry Yersinia pestis, had significantly less in the way of natural checks. The Black Death, which killed between one-third and one-half of Europe's population in the 14th century, is not blamed entirely on the cat persecution campaigns, but historians have noted the connection. The medieval Church's war on black cats helped create the conditions for a plague that killed tens of millions of people. The cats were not sorry.
Witches and Their Familiars
The connection between black cats and witchcraft was formalized through the concept of the familiar: a supernatural creature, often in animal form, that served a witch as a companion and assistant in magic. By the height of the European witch trials, the black cat had become the most culturally familiar version of the familiar, stamped into the iconography so firmly that it has never entirely left. Accused witches were asked about their cats. Cats found near accused witches were taken as evidence. The circular logic of the witch trial era, where having a cat could confirm suspicion and suspicion was sufficient to generate confession under torture, made black cats genuinely dangerous to own in some times and places.
In America, the Salem Witch Trials operated within this tradition. Animal familiars appeared in the trial testimony. The machinery of accusation, confession, and execution that killed 20 people in Salem in 1692 was built on this same European framework, imported wholesale. The Salem Witch Trials post covers how that specific machinery worked and why nobody who was executed was actually a witch, including the role that animal familiars played in the testimony.
The Geography of Bad Luck
One of the clearest signs that black cat superstition is cultural rather than universal is how inconsistently it maps onto the world. In the United States and most of continental Europe, a black cat crossing your path is bad luck. In the United Kingdom, a black cat crossing your path is good luck. In Japan, good luck. In Scotland, good luck. In Ireland, historically good luck. The identical event, a cat crossing in front of you, produces opposite meanings depending on which side of a channel or an ocean you are standing on. The cat is not doing anything different. The superstition is doing something different.
What produced the divergence is largely the reach and specific character of the continental Catholic Church's influence versus the English and Scottish reformations, combined with the timing of American immigration patterns. The Americans who were most vocal about black cat superstitions brought the continental European version with them. The British version, which is equally old and considerably more pleasant, is less culturally embedded in American folk tradition despite the enormous number of British immigrants to early America. Superstitions are not rational. They do not travel based on which version makes more sense.
Black Cats Today
Animal shelter data has shown for years that black cats and black dogs are adopted at lower rates than animals of other colors, a phenomenon shelter workers sometimes call "black dog syndrome" that extends to cats as well. The causes are debated: some researchers point to superstition, others to photography issues in online listings where black animals show less clearly, others to simple pattern preference among adopters. Whatever the cause, the effect is that black cats spend more time in shelters. Some shelters historically restricted black cat adoptions around Halloween, citing concerns about ritual harm, though this practice has become less common as evidence for the concern has remained thin.
The Black Cat T-shirt is for everyone who got to this point in the history and had the same reaction we did, which is that black cats have had it rough for 800 years through absolutely no fault of their own and deserve better. The Cat Cult T-shirt is for the people who would genuinely join one. Browse the full Cats collection for the rest of it, made by people who take the cats' side in this whole situation.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why are black cats considered bad luck?
The bad-luck association with black cats originates primarily in medieval European Christianity. Pope Gregory IX's 1233 document Vox in Rama formally linked black cats to devil worship and heresy, triggering widespread persecution of cats across Europe. This association was reinforced through the witch trial era, where black cats were considered evidence of dealings with the devil. The belief traveled to America with European immigrants and has persisted as superstition without its original theological context.
Were black cats always considered bad luck?
No. Before medieval Christianity reframed them, black cats were considered lucky or sacred across many cultures. In ancient Egypt, the goddess Bastet was associated with cats, and black cats were considered especially protective. In Japan, Scotland, and England, black cats have historically been and in many cases still are considered good luck. The bad-luck interpretation is specific to continental European and American culture and dates to the 13th century, not to ancient or universal human tradition.
What is a witch's familiar?
A familiar was believed to be a supernatural creature in animal form that assisted a witch, serving as a companion, messenger, or assistant in magical work. The concept was central to European and American witch trial testimony: accused witches were asked about animal companions, and cats, especially black ones, were the most culturally common version. Having a black cat could be used as evidence of witchcraft during the trial era. The familiar concept drew on older folkloric traditions about spirit animals but was weaponized by the witch trial machinery as a specific marker of diabolism.
Did killing cats cause the Black Death?
The relationship is indirect but real. The persecution of cats across medieval Europe, driven in part by Church association of cats with heresy and witchcraft, reduced the population of cats that would otherwise have hunted rats. Rats carry the fleas that transmit Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for bubonic plague. The Black Death, which killed between a third and half of Europe's population in the 14th century, spread through rat and flea populations that had fewer natural predators than they would have otherwise. Historians do not attribute the plague solely to cat persecution, but the connection is documented and the irony is substantial.
Are black cats really adopted less than other cats?
Yes, shelter data consistently shows that black cats spend more time in shelters and are adopted at lower rates than cats of other colors. The causes are not definitively established. Some researchers point to lingering superstition, others to practical photography issues where black animals are harder to photograph compellingly for online adoption listings, and others to color preference patterns among adopters. Whatever the cause, the effect is documented and real. Black cats are statistically less likely to find homes quickly despite having no behavioral differences from other cats.
Do any cultures still consider black cats lucky?
Yes. In the United Kingdom, Japan, Scotland, and Ireland, black cats are traditionally considered good luck, and a black cat crossing your path is a favorable omen rather than a warning. In Britain, receiving a black cat as a wedding gift was historically considered auspicious. British sailors valued black cats on ships as good luck charms and protectors against storms. The global picture on black cats is genuinely split, with the "bad luck" interpretation concentrated in continental Europe and the United States, and the "good luck" interpretation surviving in the UK and East Asia.
