Hello boys and ghouls! A very special spooky season is upon us, as our boys, Franklin and Kap, have turned from your regular everyday kitty cats into...
VAMPIRE BATS!!! (DUN DUN DUN)
Last year I didn't dress up the boys because I was being nice, but this year I needed a little Treat for myself so when I saw these bat wings at a Target in San Diego I knew I had to get them.
Surprisingly, Kap hates them more than Franklin. Kap is usually okay in clothes, but in these bat wings he just tries to walk away and hope they will fly away without him. Franklin, on the other paw, doesn't seem to mind them. He just sat and laid down with them, and once he realized he could chew on the wing tips he really enjoyed them! (Haha, but don't worry, I didn't let him chew for long.)
As we celebrate my favorite holiday today, I wanted to share some spooky history with you all about the history of halloween and cats! And let me tell you, the google search for "the history of halloween and cats" was a very fun rabbit hole to dive into. I highly recommend it if, after reading my blog post, you find yourself craving more.
Our tale begins over 2000 years ago with the Celtics. No, not the basketball team. The people from Europe who predominantly have history in Ireland and Great Britain, where much of their culture can still be found today.
According to the website Irish Cultures and Traditions, the Celts believed in the Otherworld, "a realm parallel to our own, inhabited by a myriad of mystical beings." One such being was the faerie, which were believed to be shapeshifters, transforming into animals to "observe human activities... carry out tasks in the mortal realm, or... cause mischief."
A favorite animal of the faeries was the cat. On Samhain, the ancient precursor to Halloween, the faeries would easily cross from the Otherworld to our world in the form of cats, typically black cats as they blend into the darkness of night, to "partake in festivals, play tricks, or even to guide lost souls to the afterlife."
This idea of black cats being associated with magic carried on for over a thousand years, bringing us to England in 1233. History.com continues our history lesson with Pope Gregory IX and the church document, "Vox in Rama." The decree started what we know today as The Witch Trials, and the murdering of women believed to be witches spread through Europe and eventually into America.
Cats, especially black cats, were seen by the church as being associated with Satan, and in turn with witches, as both were the enemies of God. The affection people had for cats, especially women, began to be seen as "diabolical" or "devilish," because why would you love a cat if it wasn't your magical familiar helping you spread Anti-God magic around? Eventually, the association between witches and black cats led to the belief that "witches could turn into their familiar" via their magical powers.
This association with blacks cats, witches, and the devil continued on another 791 years to our modern time of 2024. With the commercial takeover of holidays, it makes sense that "evil" icons of the past would be turned into symbols for what some view as an "evil" holiday. Witches, black cats, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, demons, and the devil are some of those "evil" icons we use to celebrate this day with, and though many people use these images for spooky fun, there are still a lot of people out there who still believe in their association with the devil, i.e. the enemy of God.
I hope you enjoyed my deep-dive into Halloween and Cats! It was very fun and certainly makes a lot of sense. No wonder people to this day still look down upon and do not fully trust childless cat ladies!
I, however, enjoy being one. ;)
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