Of Myths, Mice and Evil Spirits – A Cultural History of Cats

Reading time: approximately 12 minutes

In the context of the US election, a 2021 interview with JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, resurfaced in which he referred to the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a “childless cat lady.” It’s an interesting remark— because it inaccurate, and because it evokes the image of the eccentric old spinster living alone with countless cats. Clearly, the remark is intended as an insult. But why exactly is it insulting?

After all, cats are the queens of the internet. The ever-entertaining clickbait original. Aren’t they mysterious, beautiful, independent, headstrong, and evidently good for our mental health? Haven’t they even been considered sacred somewhere, at some time? Let’s unravel this yarn ball of historical attributions step by step.

The Cat Goddess Bastet

Let’s start with the good old days of cat worship. Perhaps the most famous example today is the ancient Egyptian deity Bastet. Ancient Egypt existed from around 4000 BCE until 395 CE, and during these more than four thousand years, the image of Bastet evolved.

Initially, Bastet is depicted as a female figure with a lioness’s head, serving as an impressive goddess of war. About a thousand years later, the lion's head transforms into that of a cat. Alternatively, Bastet appears entirely in feline form – but her nature changes as well. She becomes a goddess of protection and fertility and the patron of pregnant women. This association of cats with fertility, sexuality, and femininity is found in many other cultures and historical periods and is also central to the image of the Cat Lady. But more on that later.

Cats play an important role in ancient Egypt. From the 22nd Dynasty (around 950 BCE), they were considered sacred and an incarnation of Bastet herself. Just like beloved humans, cats were given elaborate burials – as evidenced by mummified cats and cat cemeteries (e.g., in Bubastis), as well as graves where cats are buried alongside their human companions. Wall paintings in the Theban necropolis depict cats as members of human households. All these are the legacies of influential and wealthy individuals – we know little about the general population’s relationship with cats.

Cat worship subsides after Egypt becomes a Roman province because the Roman government illegalises the pratice of paganism.

Holy Cats - Powerful Cat Ladies

Not only Ancient Egypts worship cats, they also have a special status in other cultures and times. In Islam, cats are admired for their cleanliness. Cats are considered to be ritually pure and are therefore allowed to freely roam around in cities, public places, houses and even in mosques. In Istanbul, cats are a completely natural part of the cityscape and have become a oppular tourist attraction.

Demonic cats and a questionable hypothesis about the plague

Still, cats are not always idolised. The Japanese usually cat-loving Japanese culture knows of various cat demons: Kasha (literally translated as: fire chariot), the evil opponent of the Maneki-neko, is pretty creepy and lives underneath cemeteries. Accoring to Japanese folklore, the goblin cat Bakeneko is created from unusually old and disturbingly fat domestic cats. After their transformation into monsters, they develop an appetite for human flesh – a motif also popular in Japanese horror films.

Less imaginative, but by no means less demonic, is the unfortunate black cat. It is a bad omen – when crossing the street from left to right – especially in Central Europe. In Celtic Great Britain and Ireland, on the other hand, black cats are considered lucky charms. To protect against evil spirits, dead, dried cats were build into the walls of new houses.

Cats, it is sometimes said, experienced just as much injustice during the early modern period as innocent people accused of witchcraft. The historian Robert Darnton once put forward the thesis that the plague was so devastating for Europe because cats had been burned en masse, which lead to the spread of rats as carriers of the deadly pest bacteria. This claim, however, has since been refuted.

The fact that cats' eyes seem to glow in the dark, that they survive falls from a height of several metres and apparently have (at least) seven lives, makes them a bit unsettling. They owe their glowing eyes to an additional layer of cells on their retina (called tapetum lucidum) that reflects light. And it is the positioning reflex that always allows them to land safely on their feet.

Central Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Origin of the Crazy Cat Lady?

The portrayal of cats in Central Europe in the early modern period is ambivalent. Although the cat is still a popular mouse catcher and thus also a protective animal, it is also considered antisocial, sneaky and manipulative.

According to historian Mark Hengerer, the contradictory perception of cats reflects the social change of the times: from medieval society, in which rule was understood as a personal relationship, to the impersonal and functionally organized early modern society. The fact that cats are independent, freedom-loving and quite individualistic therefore makes them both a target and a symbol of this changing society.

Apropos expectations: Women who remain unmarried and childless defy society's expectations. And – similar to cats – they are often portrayed as strange or threatening. Similarly, women who were denounced as witches often lived alone and had no children. Over time, psychological instability was added to this mix of attributes - women without children could only be or become crazy. They had not fulfilled their "only" task that was childbearing. And voilà, here we have the last piece in the puzzle of the "crazy" Cat Lady.

Because Republican vice presidential candidate Vance's problem is not the cat but the childlessness. With the "childless cat lady" comment, he accuses Kamala Harris of not having done her "service to society" in the form of bearing children. This insult also implies that women belong in the kitchen and that all those who reject this way of life are ridiculous, different, dangerous.

In doing so, he joins a long tradition, because as early as the 19th century, misogynistic caricatures often depicted women's rights activists as cats. And even back then, the feminists embraced this image and simply used it for their campaigns. The cat even became the unofficial mascot of the suffraggettes. Today, many cat fans proudly call themselves a cat ladies – regardless of whether they have children or not.

And cats? They are still independent, still cause chaos and are thus the (un)official stars of the Internet. Whether as a video, meme or photo - #CatContent always works. Maybe that's the cat worship of today?