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.

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The high road to China

silk, and the Chinese eagerly brought the elegant rodent hunters back home. Among the Chinese of centuries ago, the cat became a symbol of peace and family serenity.

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Run of the mosque

people of Europe began to think of cats as “those things that the wicked Muslims are so fond of.”

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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.

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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.

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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).

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