The Demon: When the black cat appeared as an embodiment of the Devil, all known aspects of evil were presumably focused in it. Sometimes the powers of darkness were split up and the cat would appear in a variety of demonic guises.
In some of the earliest legends, feline demons emerged from water. An ancient Chinese work tells of a cat which was owned by an emperor. It was bathing in a pool of water after three days of rain, when it was suddenly transformed into a dragon and flew off, never to be seen again.
As a beast of prey, the cat is a monster of fur, fangs, and claws. Its greatest force lies in its claws. When these seize its prey, their grip is so tenacious that nothing can break it. (It is significant to note that the Devil has been known as "Old Scratch," a Scandinavian equivalent of "Old Nick.")
One of the world's greatest stories of heroic combat must surely be that in which the legendary King Arthur fought in Switzerland with a monstrous cat. A fourteenth century French manuscript,
Le Roman de Merlin, gives a lively if bloodcurdling account of the fight, which was among Arthur's most dangerous exploits.
It first tells of a man who was fishing one day in Lake Geneva and caught in his net a black kitten. He fed it and gave it a home, but it soon became much larger than most cats. Finally it strangled not only the befriending fisherman, but also his wife and children. After this, the monster fled to the mountains -
a catte, full of the devell that is so grete and ougly, that it is a horrible sight on to loke. It became the terror of the countryside, destroying all who came within its reach.
Arthur and his knights, led by the magician, Merlin, set out to encounter this feline demon. After they had climbed up a mountainside, Merlin pointed out the deep cave which he knew to be the cat's lair. He warned the heroes to be ready to defend themselves. When they had all drawn back, he whistled to rouse the animal. Immediately, it appeared at the entrance and took one great leap at Arthur. The king received this onslaught with his spear, but the cat broke the weapon to pieces in his mouth.
Then the ferocious beast sprang at Arthur's throat, but he used his shield so expertly that it fell to the ground. After Arthur had struck the cat on its head so that the skin was cut by his sword, the animal seized him by the shoulders and its claws in his shield so that they could not be extricated. The king had to cut its forelegs off; but, when he ran with his sword toward the fallen cat, it flew at his throat, gripping him with its hind feet and biting his chest and shoulders till they were streaming with blood.
Arthur finally managed to free himself, but only by cutting off its hind legs. The mutilated monster again fell to the ground, and began to slither off in the direction of its cave. With the heroic struggle at an end, Arthur pressed forward and killed the cat.
From then on the mountain called "du lac" was known as "du chat." It was said that Arthur disappeared after this terrible fight, and there is a tradition that he was actually slain by the cat.
An early Welsh legend tells of a savage kitten with which Arthur was indirectly connected, and which grew up to be one of the Three Plagues of Anglesey. In about 800 B.C., the Britons worshipped Cerridwen, the Mother Goddess, who often took the form of a sow. The legend tells how a sow called Henwen, who was very big with young, lived in Cornwall where she was tended by her keeper, Coll. It had been prophesied that Britain would be injured by her progeny, so when Henwen was about to farrow, Authur collected together the country's forces and set out to destroy her. He chased her down to Land's End but did not kill her, for she swam out to sea with the swineherd hanging on to her by her bristles.
The huge sow landed at a number of places. In them she brought forth three grains of wheat, one of barley, one grain of rye, three bees, a pig, a wolf cub and an eaglet - for all of which gifts the places became famous. Finally Henwen landed with Coll at Arvon. Here, under a black stone, she bore a kitten. By so doing they brought disaster to their country, for it was this kitten which became the ferocious Paluc cat - notoriously known as the molester of the Isle of Man.
Wild cats are notoriously fierce and will attack a man without provocation. The cat-a-mountain haunts heraldic devices, and the Mackintosh family's motto:
Touch not a cat but [without] a glove, is an indication of this animal's reputation. The French name for a wild cat is
haret, a word cognate with the English
harry, which is associated with pillage, plunder and destruction.
From the East come stories of phantom cats. The Japanese (to whom the cat is a tiger who eats from the hand) have a legend which tells of a feline jinn which annually demanded human sacrifice. A knight, who was travelling in the mountains, spent the night in a ruined temple. Just before midnight, he was abruptly awakened and found beside him a number of ghostly cats, which were dancing and loudly chanting: Don't tell Shippeitaro about it. When midnight struck, they disappeared. The next day when the knight resumed his travels, he came to a village whose inhabitants appeared to be very distressed. They explained to him that day had arrived on which the annual tribute must be paid to the feline jinn of the mountain. The most beautiful maiden of the village had to put in a cage; the terrible phantom cat would drag her to his lair - the ruined temple - and there it would slowly devour her.
On hearing this pathetic tale, the knight, recalling his experience of the previous evening, asked who Shippeitaro was. He was told that it was the name of a big brave dog which belonged to the local prince. The knight thought the dog could disperse the phantom cats, so he went to the prince. He explained the plight of the villagers. The prince loaned him Shippeitaro and the knight took him to the cage prepared for the maiden victim. Helped by village youths, the knight then carried the litter to the temple where he and Shippeitaro kept watch until midnight. When the phantom cats appeared, they had with them as their leader an enormous tom cat, which prowled round the cage uttering screams of anticipatory delight. Suddenly the knight flung open the cage door and Shippeitaro sprang forth, grabbing the great cat between his teeth. In a flash the knight drew his sword and succeeded in slaying the ferocious beast. Shippeitaro soon dispersed the rest of the cats and the village was released from its annual persecution.
In the sixth century, the Chinese believed in cat spectres. An ancient story is told of a man called T'o, whose mother was said to serve a cat spectre. When cat spectres killed anybody, the possessions of the victim were secretly drawn to the house which the demon frequented. In A.D. 595, according to the story, the empress was suffering from an unaccountable illness. People said that T'o, who wanted money for liquor, had persuaded his mother to utter her spells and send the cat spectre to the palace to bewitch the empress into bestowing gifts on him.
The emperor was advised that the only way to put an end to spectral evil was by killing the person from whom it emanated. The next time T'o's female slave appeared at the palace gate, she was met by police and told to call back the cat spectre. This she did by setting out a bowl of rice gruel and drumming on it with a spoon. When the cat spectre answered her call, the slave went blue in the face and moved about as if she were being trailed. The emperor was on the point of ordering T'o and his wife to commit suicide, when T'o's brother arrived at the palace on their behalf begging for mercy. T'o was granted his life, but he was divested of all his dignities and his wife was made a Buddhist nun. The emperor lost no time in seeking out all families who kept cat spectres, and he banished them to remote parts of China.
It was believed by some Chinese of this period, that after death, people sometimes changed themselves into cats in order to take revenge on their enemies. A court lady, whose empress had sentenced her to death, threatened to return and change the latter into a rat so that, in cat form, she could throttle her. Orientials say that if one is afraid of cats, one must have been a rat in one's last incarnation.
There are European tales of cat goblins. In some parts of Provence, people say that it is unwise for travellers to answer anyone who speaks to them after sundown. The danger is that they might be accosted by one of those earth spirits which are neither good enough to be angels nor bad enough to be devils, but are mischievous to humans. Such demons most often appear as cats with blazing eyes and pale, luminous bodies. They move with supernatural speed, so it is useless to attempt to run away from them. The only advice given to travellers who meet them is to cover their eyes, call on all their saints for help, and make for the nearest lighted cottage. Slavic peasants try to avoid meeting black cats late at night, for they believe them to be demonic and liable to seize and destroy lonely travellers.
Stories are told in the Scottish Highlands of elfin cats, described as large black beasts with arched backs, erect bristles, and white spots dotted over their chests. Cats of the Isle of Man are said to have their own king. This king appears as an ordinary cat during the day, but at night, when he assumes full regal powers, he travels across the countryside in a fiery state. If anyone has treated him badly during the daytime, he will seek him out and take terrible vengeance on him.
Cats are natural prey "teasers" - to humans, the way the cat plays with its wounded prey is cruel. To play cat and mouse is to pretend to let go of someone within one's power while in fact, one is still holding him a prisoner. People who lived within the sphere of action of any of these feline "demons" must have known what it was like to live under the cat's paw, for they appear to have enjoyed an untormented existence only at the cat's sufferance.
