"But once gain his confidence, and he is a friend for life. He shares your hours of work, of solitude, of melancholy. He spends whole evenings on your knee, purring and dozing, content with your silence, and spurning for your sake the society of his kind." ~ Theophile Gautier
The White Cat Continued
The Healer: A healer is, from one point of view, someone who rids us of poisons. Cats do their best to keep our lives free from poisonous influences in so far as these are represented by the venomous snake. There's a belief that if a house is deserted by cats, there will always be illness in it. In Paraguay, cats are used for snake hunting and some have been known to struggle with rattlesnakes for hours. They are very adept in their method of dealing with these reptiles, striking them with a paw, then slipping to one side to avoid the counter-attack. It is thought that the reason cats were considered holy by the Egyptians was that they could be relied on to destroy venomous snakes. The serpent, a symbol of cosmic evil in ancient Egypt, was overcome at the eclipse by the solar cat.
Bastet, the cat goddess, had the power to heal. There is a scarab engraved with a cat inscribed "Bastet, the Nurse." The cat and the snake share their respective attributes; the latter has always been used as a symbol of healing. In spite of the fact that in certain context, the snake is a healer, it also represents its opposite: the disease. When Bastet or her feline representative is found striking a snake, the snake expresses all that is poisonous, terrifying and revolting.
The cat's reputation for killing snakes extended to one for healing those bitten by them. Bastet was believed to be specially successful in her treatment of people or animals suffering from poisonous bites or stings. A myth tells how she was herself stung by a scorpion and saved from death only by the first aid she received from Ra.
This story was engraved on a stone slab in about 370 B.C. and is now known as the Metternich Stele. It is exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of New York. The stele is covered with magical texts, one which is labelled
Spell for exorcising poison from a cat. The spell, which consisted of reciting the drama of Bastet, was used on behalf of household or temple cats which had been stung by scorpions. By identifying the sick cat with Bastet, it could share in the healing that the goddess had received.
According to the text, Bastet cried out to her father for help:
O Ra, come to your daughter whom the scorpion has stung on a lonely road. Her cries reach heaven. The poison which has entered her limbs flows through her veins. She has sucked the wound but, lo, the poison is in her limbs. Come then with your might, with your frightfulness, with your magnificence.
Ra replies that he is protecting her and will overcome the poison. An incantation follows in which each limb of the cat is mentioned individually and placed under the protection of a different god. A tourniquet is applied inscribed with the further spell:
O evil poison which is in every limb of the sick cat, come forth on earth.
On the base of the stele, there is a short spell for a sick cat addressed to Bastet. The Metternich Stele was one of those known as the Cippi of Horus and used as a househould talisman. On it was carved the figure of Horus, Bastet's brother, who was invoked to protect the household from all ill. It was believed that the stone tablet formed an impassable barrier to all venomous animals and evil spirits.
Bastet not only destroyed the sun god's enemies but, as a moon goddess and deity of the underworld, she also protected the dead from attack in the hereafter. She acquired this reputation largely though her ability to see in the dark. Magical ivory wands buried in tombs to give protection against supernatural evil sometimes had cat-headed terminals or had cats engraved on them. The deities whose protection was invoked, were often represented as subduing evil by eating venomous snakes. The wands are thought to have contained the horoscopes of the individuals with whom they are buried.
The cat suffered as a result of its association with healing, for parts of its anatomy have frequently been used in folk medicine. It was believed if one killed a cat, one was liable to be possessed by it and that eating part of the animal was the only way to avert such a disaster.
The Japanese believed that a black cat could cure spasms if placed on the stomach of a sick person and could cure melancholia and epilepsy.
Cat fur has been used as a remedy for burns and is still believed to be efficacious in the treatment of arthritis. Many arthrtic people encourage a cat to settle on their shoulders, or to stretch out asleep on them at night.
The Dutch believed that inflammation could be cured by the application of the skin of a freshly killed cat. Elsewhere, cat skin has been used to treat sore throats and hives.
The cat is specially noted as a healer of blindness, which is not surprising in view of its reputation as a seer. In parts of Scotland, people believe a cat has the power to bring vision to the mentally blinded. Their advise to "cast the cat over him" is given when someone appears to be deluded. Topsell gives a prescription for physical blindness, which was approved by physicans of his day - take a solid black cat's head and burn it to ashes in an earthen or interiorly glazed pot; place into a quill to be blown three times a day into the eye and the blindness would disappear.
The tail of the cat is most widely used for healing. The cat's tail is a specially sensitive part of its anatomy and is responsible to some extent for its balance. (Manx cats keep their balance quite well without a tail, but don't climb as well as other breeds.) The tail is an organ of the cat's self-expression and has a complete language of its own. The Greek word for cat means "tail waver."
The tail is supposed to have the power to cure sties. In English country districts, it is accepted that if one rubs a sty with a tom cat's tail, the swelling will disappear. In Cornwall, a spell is used in treatment of sties - one strokes the eye with a black cat's tail on the first night of a full moon and recites:
I poke thee, I don't poke thee, I toke the queff that's under the 'ee. Oh, qualy way; oh, qualy way.
It is used in a rite to cure any kind of itch. A left-handed man must first find a black cat, then whirl it three times around his own head. He should then prepare an ointment consisting of nine drops of blood taken from the cat's tail and the charred remains from nine roasted barleycorns. This is applied with a gold wedding ring as he walks three times arount the patient, invoking the Trinity. If the itch is known to be caused by shingles, all that is required is to smear the affected area with blood taken from a black cat's tail.
To cure whitlows, one must pass the tail of a black cat from the back of one's hand down between the first and second fingers, then up again between the second and third, down between the third and fourth fingers - three successive nights. To remove warts, rub them with the tail of a tortoise-shell tom, but this treatment only works in the month of May.
To avoid sickness in the family altogether, cut off a black cat's tail and bury it beneath one's doorstep.
The cat's healing power focused in its tail. The Celts considered the tail to be very precious and potent, for they believed if one were disrespectful enough to tread on a cat's tail, a serpent would come out and bite the treader.
The Hunter: The cat is a natural hunter. The Egyptian name Bast means "tearer" or "renderer;" the Indo-European root
ghad, from which the Greek, Latin, Russian, Arabic, German and French words for cat derive, means "to grasp" or "to catch." In the Jewish Talmud, the cat is called "pouncer."
Unlike the dog, the cat does not chase its prey; it lies in wait for it and then pounces. Its patience is proverbial, for it will sit for hours silently watching its potential victim. In sacred words of Chinese Buddhism, the meditative attitude is likened to that of a cat which crouches, patiently and motionlessly vigilant, until the time comes for it to pounce on its prey, which are the "distractions."
In Egypt wild cats prowled about the marshlands in search of birds. Tomb reliefs and paintings show marshland scenes with cats sitting in hiding among full-blown papyrus heads, or creeping up the stems stalking birds.
Egyptians made use of the cat's hunting instinct, training it to catch and retrieve birds. Cats went with their masters on fowling expeditions and were let out of the boats into papyrus thickets growing near the water's edge. Tomb paintings show yellow cats with black markings waiting impatiently in boats or among reeds in the thickets.
The traditional victim of the cat's hunting is, however, the mouse.
When Egyptians first tamed the cat, around 3000 BC, it was to protect their grains from rodents. Mice and rats are carriers of disease, who steal food and nibble and gnaw their way through human possessions. Worse, they multiply at such speed that the problem of uncontrollable hordes of rodents would soon be an overwhelming one if the cat had not solved it.
Once a mouse is caught, the cat has no difficulty in killing it. The timid gray creatures scuttle about as though they expect to be pounced on, appearing to court disaster. Rats, on the other hand, can be fierce fighters, and cats show great courage in tackling them. When a cat pounces on a large rat and all goes well, it deals skillfully with the problem, stunning the rat with a blow, and seizing it by the head in a vice-like grip. The cat is often left panting with exhaustion after struggling with a rat and can be badly wounded by it.
Aesop believed that mousing was so much a part of cat nature that this habit would always remain. One of his fables tells of a young man who fell in love with a cat. He felt so miserable and frustrated that he prayed to Venus to transform the cat into a beautiful woman. The goddess of love granted his request. He married the cat girl, but their happiness was unfortunately short lived. When the bride lay in her husband's arms during their wedding night, she suddenly saw a mouse appear from under the skirting board. Instictively she sprang from their bed after it. Venus was furious that her sacred rites should be profaned by such indecent behavior, and she returned her to her cat form.
Another of Aesop's cats leaves no doubt as to what it considered its rights, for it addressed a mouse:
...thou victim of my paw by well-established law. A Russian legend brings out the advantages of this aspect of cat nature: a dog and cat were on guard at the gates of Paradise when Lucifer tried to creep back disguised as a mouse. The dog let him pass, but the cat pounced on him.
Cats and mice are associated in legends concerned with beginning of the world. According to one legend, not only did rodents precede cats but their existence was the reason for the cat's creation. At the time of Flood, there were no cats. Noah took pairs of rats and mice into the Ark, with the result it was soon overrun with vermin. Noah asked the lion, the king of beasts, to take care of the situation. The lion sneezed, and from his nostrils emerged a pair of cats, which soon reduced the rodent population.
Another legend tells that God created the cat, but that the mouse was Satan's creation. The Devil's mouse did its best to destroy life once and for all by nibbling a hole in Noah's Ark. Fortunately, it was caught by God's cat and the hole was closed by a frog who crept into it.
An Italian legend about St. Francis tells of the behavior of God's cat and the Devil's mouse. When the recluse was living in his hermitage, he was plagued by Satan's efforts to distract him in prayer. Having failed many times, as a last resort, the Devil sent hundreds of mice to torment him. These diabolic animals overran the saint's cell, gnawing at his garments and nibbling his feet. They were bringing St. Francis' prayers to a close when suddenly out of his loose sleeve sprang a cat. The speed and fury of the cat's onslaught was such that, out of hundreds of mice, only two escaped by hiding in a crack in the wall. All descendants of this holy cat still sit motionless before holes and crevices, waiting to catch the fugitives.
Another legend accounts for the traditional enmity between cat and mouse. At the beginning of the world, the sun and moon created all the animals. First, the sun created the lion which was majestic and full of fire like himself. The moon, seeing that the gods were lost in admiration of the lion, determined not to be outdone, produced the cat. Not only did the gods laugh at the obvious inferiority of the moon's creature, but the sun became very indignant that the moon dared to compete with him at all - he created the mouse as a symbol of his contempt. The moon, angered by the mockery of her efforts, created an eternal hatred between cat and mouse as a final effort to avenge herself on the sun.
Lunar mythology closely associates the cat and the mouse. Bastet, like Artemis, the Greek goddess which whom she was often idenitified, was a huntress. Artemis has been called "The Madonna of the Silver Bow;" the silver bow was the crescent of the new moon and her shining arrows were moonbeams. The gray clouds of twilight were mice - those thieving, shadowy elements of night which were dispersed by the darting paws of the radiant cat moon.
The Hindu word for cat means "the cleanser." The cat is famous for its cleanliness, and the luminous cat moon is the cleanser of the night, since she rids it of the shadowy gray mice clouds.
Mice have been believed to be the souls of the departed - the ghosts who emerge from the underworld and wander in twilight. Japanese fishermen frequently take a tortoise-shell out to sea, for they believe it not only keeps away rats - those notorious deserters of sinking ships - but also protects them from the "honorable ghosts" of their ancestors.
In lunar mythology, the moon is thought of as a hunting cat. A primitive American Indian tribe sees the waning moon as a victim of mice which, as animals of darkness, nibble at its sides until they have totally consumed it. But when the cat is identified with the sun, then the moon is likened to a white mouse. Some West African tribes explained a lunar eclipse by saying that a cat is eating the moon. They believed that the sun returns over the same route at night as it does during the day. An eclipse means the moon, having lost her way, has obstructed the sun and is being devoured by him. The natives tried to help the moon by ritual, using slow hand clapping to persuade the solar cat to release her.
