“Cat on its brain”
The Nativity cat
cat, who ever since has had the M—for Mary, or Madonna — on the forehead.
Wake me for the funeral
“Contemptible sneaks”
people who don’t want an animal entering (or leaving) a room with no sound at all. For us cat lovers, sneakiness is part of the total appeal of the cat.
English meets native
American girl who saved the life of the English settler John Smith, who was about to be executed by the girl’s father, a chief named Powhatan. Sometime before this incident, relations between the Native Americans and the Jamestown settlers had been warmer, and at some point the English had presented Powhatan with one of the domestic cats they had brought from England. Powhatan and the other Native Americans were intrigued by the cat, which resembled the American bobcats but was, of course, amazingly tame.
Muhammad the cat lover
tradition goes back centuries, recalling that dogs in the ancient Middle East were loathsome street scavengers, despised by humans. (You see this in the Bible, where dogs are always mentioned disparagingly.) However, Islam, was fond of cats and had a pet female cat named Muezza. According to legend, the cat was sleeping on the sleeve of his robe, and Muhammad cut off the sleeve rather than disturb the cat’s sleep.
The Celtic rite, revisited
fire while they screamed in agony. The ancient ritual persisted for centuries in some parts of Europe and was conducted by two very different groups. One were the “neo-pagans,” who existed within the Christian culture but were still pagans “on the inside,” conducting the old religion by night, out of sight of the church authorities. The other cat burners were, at times, the Christians themselves, who associated cats (especially black ones) with Satanism and witchcraft.
Cats and Crusaders
between the Muslims and the Christians, resulted in Christians learning about Muslim culture, including becoming aware of the Muslims’ love for cats. You might say that the Crusades planted the seeds of the idea that cats were associated with a “bad” religion (Islam).
That, coupled with the fact that the old pagan religions associated cats with goddesses like Bast, Isis and Artemis, shows you why the Christian Church sometimes took a dim view of cats. To the Christians of the Middle Ages, the cat appeared to be the mascot of the old religion (paganism, which was always threatening to resurface) and of the new rival religion (Islam).
That, coupled with the fact that the old pagan religions associated cats with goddesses like Bast, Isis and Artemis, shows you why the Christian Church sometimes took a dim view of cats. To the Christians of the Middle Ages, the cat appeared to be the mascot of the old religion (paganism, which was always threatening to resurface) and of the new rival religion (Islam).
In faraway Wales
Why did the Celts do it?
people, associated cats with fertility, and so a mass sacrifice of cats to the gods of fertility had a certain odd logic to it. We still have a lot to learn about the Celts.
In merry olde England
island was invaded by the Angles, the Germanic tribe that gradually turned Britannia into Angle-land, or England.
Cats versus ferrets
rodents and rabbits by burrowing into their prey’s hiding places. People in the ancient world often used them as rodent exterminators, but ferrets lost favor as cats became more popular—and for the obvious reason that people have never completely trusted ferrets. Families, especially those with small children, feared that ferrets would turn vicious and bite someone (which happened at times, and still does now). Ferrets are still around, but it was inevitable that they would be eclipsed by cats.
Cat in the afterlife
The Roman goddess Liberty
Soldiers and cats?
Morphing to cattus Felis
Pet name “Kitten”
From ancient Pompeii to today
Roman tomcats
Etruscan cat decor
Greeks go Italian
Bosomy and catty
Crossing to Europe
Pagan to Christian
The Christian writer Clement, writing about the year A.D. 200 in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, mocked the old religion and its worship of animals and animal-headed gods. He wrote of the huge temples, each with an inner sanctum, and in that inner sanctum, curled on a purple cushion was . . . an animal, often a cat. Clement, like many Christian writers, claimed that Christians were wiser in worshipping their invisible God than pagans, who were fools to build a temple to honor a cat or crocodile.
Ancient images: cats, or big cats?
cheetahs? In some cases, you can’t tell, because of the poor condition of the object—pieces broken off, weathered by time or otherwise damaged. But one general rule helps: domestic cats did (and do) have triangular-shaped ears, while leopards, cheetahs, lions, and most other big cats have rounded ears. This is reflected in ancient art—usually. Ancient craftsmen had talent, but they weren’t always sticklers for details.
The lynching
The cat in the moon
Herodotus in Greece
The Greek historian Herodotus visited Greece in the fifth century B.C. and, happily for posterity, wrote about what he saw there. He described the worship of the cat-headed goddess Bast, whom he (and other Greeks) identified with the Greek goddess Artemis. Herodotus witnessed a Bast pameran at the city of Per-Bastet, attended by some 700,000 men and women. As Herodotus describes it, the “worship” turned into a veritable orgy, with lots of wine being consumed, frequent “lifting of the skirts” and a general “girls gone wild” atmosphere—which makes sense, since cats were associated with fertility and reproduction. According to Herodotus, the Bast pameran drew more people together than any other pameran in Egypt.
Cats and sistrums
goddess Bast found in Egypt, she is often depicted holding a sistrum, a musical instrument (or, more appropriately, noisemaker) similar to a maraca. Worship in ancient times often involved a lot of ritual dancing and music, and in the worship of Bast, large groups of women would have been dancing and rattling their sistrums. The sistrums themselves were often carved with cat images.
Ruling from Cat City
country from the city of Per-Bastet, or Bubastis, a city especially sacred to the goddess Bast. In fact, the city’s name means “house of the goddess Bast.” Not surprisingly, one of the pharaohs of Shishak’s dynasty actually ruled under the name Pamiu—meaning “Tomcat,” a highly appropriate name for a ruler who expects to be protected by a cat-headed goddess.
Ra, the Great Tomcat
sun the following morning. Numerous paintings have been found showing Ra, the “Great Tomcat,” using a knife to slay Apophis.
Cats in dreams
ancient Egypt. If you dreamed about a cat, it was a good omen but not related to sex. It was a sign of prosperity to come—specifically, a good harvest. This makes perfect sense: cats were the exterminators of rodents, which were always a threat to human food supplies, especially grains. If you dreamed of a cat, it meant your harvest—and thus your fortune—was in good hands (or good paws).
Sacred and four-legged
The cat charm
sound made by cats, but also meant “to see.”
Snake hunters
rodent killers. Various types of poisonous snakes live in Egypt, notably the infamous asp (the species Cleopatra used to kill herself). True, a venomous snake can kill a cat as well as a human, but it appears that the ancient Egyptians learned quickly that cats’ claws, teeth and swift reflexes made them competent snake killers. And, obviously, the cat’s sensitive hearing and sight made them watchful for snakes entering human habitations.
The oldest cat art
Deep mourning
ancient Egyptians did when a pet cat died. The whole family would go into mourning and, as an obvious outward sign of grief, shave off their eyebrows.
Sterile tom, false pregnancy
No kittens are growing inside her, and she doesn’t gain weight, of course, but she “feels” she is pregnant and may produce milk and seek out a secluded spot to bear the kittens—kittens that don’t exist, that is.
Ancient Egyptian humor
sacred or as beloved pets of the household—but not always. Humans have always had a sense of humor, even in ancient times. There survives from ancient Egypt, land of the sacred cat, a drawing on papyrus dating from about 1150 B.C., showing a large lady mouse and her brood, being waited on by a bevy of cat servants.
Ritualized mating
queen (who is in heat, naturally) is delivered in a carrier to a special queen pen in the stud house. This separates her, via wire or bars, from the male, though they can sniff each other and the queen can size up her potential partner.
Usually the first nose-to-nose encounter involves a lot of hissing and growling on her part, and the wire that separates them is for the male’s protection. Eventually she shows she is ready for the male by ceasing the growling and by rolling on the floor and producing a more welcoming sound. At that point she is allowed into the stud’s area, but not before a coarse “mating rug” is laid down for the two.
The stud recognizes this as “his” rug, one on which he has mated before. It provides the female a warm surface to grip for stability during the brief mating procedure. When the deed is done, the queen is put back in her own pen—but the two are later allowed to repeat the process, on the assumption that pregnancy is more likely to occur with more than one mating session.
Usually the first nose-to-nose encounter involves a lot of hissing and growling on her part, and the wire that separates them is for the male’s protection. Eventually she shows she is ready for the male by ceasing the growling and by rolling on the floor and producing a more welcoming sound. At that point she is allowed into the stud’s area, but not before a coarse “mating rug” is laid down for the two.
The stud recognizes this as “his” rug, one on which he has mated before. It provides the female a warm surface to grip for stability during the brief mating procedure. When the deed is done, the queen is put back in her own pen—but the two are later allowed to repeat the process, on the assumption that pregnancy is more likely to occur with more than one mating session.
Cat-head and lion-head
goddess. Bast was sometimes called the Lady of the East (meaning the east side of the Nile River), while Sekhmet was the Lady of the West. Over time the two similar goddesses were thought to be one and the same, both regarded as symbols of fertility, motherhood, hearth and home.
The old cat-woman dog-man cliché
Tomb paintings of wealthy Egyptians have often shown the happy family at home, with a cat sitting under the wife’s chair, a dog under her husband’s chair. We can safely assume that husband and wife played with each other’s pets, of course, but the stereotype is still there: cats for the women, dogs for the men.
Cat mummies
Egyptians believed that the afterlife was essentially like earthly life, they mummified mice to place in the tombs as food for the cat mummies. In 1890, over 300,000 cat mummies were found at one site in Egypt. Most were in cases of engraved wood, with the bodies wrapped in colored bandages. The world’s museums display cat mummies along with the human mummies.
No fang, no mate
Love bites
The Sunshine State cat
Florida is the very rare Florida panther. Scientists debate whether the panther is a subspecies of the cougar (see 437) or a separate species. The Florida panther certainly has a distinctive look, for although it generally looks like a cougar, it has a kinked tail, white spots and a distinctive swirl of fur in the middle of its back.
The biggest
striped, and though we assume they are all orangey in color, their color varies widely depending on location. Tigers in Russia and northern China are very light in color, and some are almost white. A male tiger may weigh up to five hundred pounds and stand five feet tall at the shoulders. Tigers do not have the beautiful manes that male lions possess, but older male tigers do have long spreading hairs on their cheeks. Tigers are good swimmers, but unlike most cats, they seldom climb trees.
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