Black Cats and Society

In many societies black cats are considered bad luck or evil beings. In most animal shelters black cats have a harder time getting adopted, second only to white cats who suffer because people don’t like finding white hairs on their furniture. There are a couple of groups of people who adore black cats, but sometimes animal shelters will judge these people harshly and not allow them to adopt, I refer to people like “Goths”, “Emos”, and “Wiccans”. Of course if you wear a lot of black, a cat with black hair is highly desirable.
Unfortunately for these people, shelters sometimes judge them with a negative view and occasionally will refuse to adopt a pet to them. Is this fair?

Well of course life is not fair, but these people for the most part are picking a cat that many others would not pick. The assumption on behalf of the shelter is that the people are going to do “bad things” to the kitty. Why though, would somebody go to adopt a cat only to hurt it, when they could just as easily get a free one out of the newspaper? I have known a few alternative style people, and they seem to love their pets just as much as anyone would.

Sometimes it is felt that these people are devil worshipers, Satanists who are going to kill the cats. This is unfair, and we should note that one of the earliest accounts for killing black cats was actually done by Christians.
In the days of the “Witch Hunts” when early Christians tried to destroy any traces of Pagan beliefs, they tied women, accused of being witches, to stakes and set them on fire. Black cats were associated with witches since cats are nocturnal and black cats could not be seen at night. It was believed that witches had the power to transform themselves into black cats to sneak around unseen in the dark. As such the earliest mass killings of black cats were done by Christians, not Satanists, as the kitties were tossed into the fire too.

People who are into the Gothic culture, or who simply love black clothing, are not necessarily Devil worshipers. Chances are if a person is going to be abusive to a pet, and they are trying to adopt it from a shelter, they are going to go there appearing as “normal” as possible.
Additionally a black cat is neither lucky or unlucky, luck comes from a persons attitude, not the color cat they own. If anything a black cat is lucky, since black absorbs energy, it would draw things to it.

We pick our pets because we love them, when we get a new pet, particularly a cat, we have very little to judge it on other than color and length of hair. If the color black appeals to a person, that should not mean we judge the person negatively anymore than we would judge somebody positively for liking a calico kitty. All cats need loving homes, that should be what matters, let us judge the person not on their looks, but on their ability to provide a loving home for the pet in question.

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