The cat that takes the blame

From Symbols of Magic… to Bad Luck

A black cat crosses your path.
You freeze.
You briefly consider walking around the entire block because “you never know.”

And just like that, in the 21st century, the same era that sends robots to Mars, humanity still fears a three-kilo animal with a tail.

If there were an Olympics sport about superstitions, black cats would win the gold.
Not because they deserve it, but because humanity loves blaming what it doesn’t understand and nothing is more “unfathomable” than blackness in the dead of night.

(If you want to read how our favorite pet… domesticated us, click here.)

The Document That Declared War on Cats

June 13th, 1233. The Middle Ages: where anything black was automatically suspicious.

The Catholic Church issues a decree titled Vox in Rama.
It was the official paper that dragged black cats straight into hell, historically speaking.

The document described supposed “satanic rituals” in Germany, where initiates allegedly had to kiss the backside of a black cat for the Devil to appear.
Who, of course, was said to have the lower body of a cat, covered entirely in black fur.

What began as an attack on pagan cults quickly devolved into war against the animals themselves.
The black cat became “the Devil’s vessel.”
And medieval humans, who had no idea what soap was, decided that killing a cat would somehow cleanse evil.

Europe: A Giant Festival of Delusion

Black cats became “bad luck” the moment humans started seeing shadows and imagining demons. Darkness was dangerous; anything resembling it… also dangerous.

So black cats became the perfect excuse:
“It’s not my fault; the cat looked at me funny.”

It’s always easier to blame what can’t defend itself.

• In Denmark, during Lent, people beat black cats to death “to purify the town.”

• In France, they burned them alive in public squares.

• In Belgium, they threw them off bell towers and then burned them, during the Kattenstoet festival (which still exists today, only with plush toys now).

By the 1300s, Europe’s cat population had crashed.
Once the continent “cleansed” itself of black cats - excellent nocturnal hunters with unbeatable camouflage - the rat population exploded.
And with the rats came the plague.

Humans literally destroyed the natural predators of disease carriers.
In other words: they tried to exterminate “evil,” and evil rewarded them with 25 million deaths.

Karma?

The Curse Migrates

The Puritans shipped this fear straight to America.
In Salem, a woman could be burned as a witch simply because she owned a black cat.
When you don’t understand something, you burn it.
Then fear it forever.

The belief that black cats were “witches’ familiars” rooted itself so deeply that the myth of bad luck was born:
If a black cat crosses your path, something terrible will happen.

Not because the cat did anything.
But because someone believed it was a witch’s spy, or worse, the witch herself in disguise.

Superstition is humanity’s most stable export.
Can’t control life?
Blame the cat you walked past.

From the Middle Ages to Your Instagram Feed

Centuries later, black cats still haven’t escaped their reputation.
Movies, memes, Halloween, they’re always portrayed as dark, mysterious, “suspicious.”

Fast forward to today: in animal shelters, black cats have

• the highest euthanasia rate (74.6%)

• and the lowest adoption rate (just 10%).

Why?

“They don’t photograph well.”
(If that isn’t the essence of our superficial era, I don’t know what is.)

Once, they burned them for their color.
Now, they ignore them for the same reason.
Evolution, they say.

The Real “Evil Spirit”

If there’s anything demonic in this story, it’s not the cat.
It’s the human tendency to always seek a scapegoat (or a scapecat) to pretend we control randomness.

Meanwhile, cats, like the Bombay with her glossy black coat and emerald eyes, are simply looking for a home…
while humans continue searching for “signs.”

And while people hunt for the next omen, the cat just washes its whiskers.
Because unlike us, it doesn’t need theories to justify its mistakes.

If a black cat crosses your path…
she’ll probably just look at you as if to say,
“Still looking for meaning where there isn’t any?”
and move on.

Do the same.
It’s probably trying to save you from something far more dangerous: the centuries-old stupidity of humankind.

🖤 Zerofack$: defending black cats since 2025, because some stories don’t need exorcism, just basic intellect. 😉

“Black cats don’t bring bad luck.
People do - every time they need someone to blame for their darkness.”