Because without cats there would be no civilization.
The deal we struck with cats, back during the dawn of agriculture, was that they take care of the rodents who ate our grain, and we would love and admire them for it. Domestication has lengthened their kitten traits and made them even more affectionate; while the further march of civilization has largely removed the original reason they were hanging around with us.
So now it?s just the love.
How did cats go from being worshiped in Egypt to being hunted down as witch familiars?
Superstition and scapegoating. In other worse, falsity.
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Cats come up at Halloween just as witches do; they go together in the popular imagination. Yet, my Wiccan friends love cats at the same rate my friends of other religions do. Did you know how this particular tie-in came about? Because older ladies were once the target of actual ?witch hunts.? Then, so were their cats.
From the 15th to the 18th centuries, the Catholic Church orchestrated a moral panic about witches. It is highly ironic that the Catholic Church would be instrumental in using such beliefs in rooting out heresy, because during the medieval era such beliefs were denounced as pagan superstition. But shifts in the theology created a new emphasis on Satan, and external events (cough-Martin Luther!-cough) were creating pressures which demanded defense.
Women were generally powerless; older, widowed or unmarried, women; even more so. And, then and now, they had cats.
It?s really that simple. Cats were hunted down and killed and let the rats, who spread the Black Plague, proliferate.
Now, hundreds of years later, people celebrate Halloween with images of witches and black cats. People pick up a subliminal message: cats are scary.
Like all prejudices, they inflict harm on both the object of the prejudice, and the ones who hold it. Cats suffer from a false image, and people suffer from a lack of understanding.
Many people have living circumstances where cats would suit them better than dogs. Yet, they don?t consider cats to be a good pet choice. If asked, they cannot articulate a good reason; only excuses and false assumptions.
This upsets me on more than the level of accuracy. There are so many cats who need homes. There are so many people without pet companionship.
It is foolish for prejudice to create so much unhappiness.
See previous posts on Halloween subjects: Black Cats and Halloween and Prejudice, and a warning about Cat Safety on Halloween.
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Source: http://www.wayofcats.com/blog/deception-and-halloween-and-cats/21532
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