Earlier this month, shelters were reporting a particularly high number of animal abandonments. Dogs, cats… And more particularly black cats, as the 30 million Friends Foundation asserts on Wednesday. “The shelters are full of neglected black cats, victims of superstitions”, loose the association on Twitter on the occasion of World Black Cat Day. Same story on the side of the Hauts-de-Seine prefecture which ensures that these cats are “the most abandoned and the least adopted”.
The Humane Society (SPA) does not list cats by color and therefore could not provide us with statistics. She reports, however, that shelters often feel that little black furballs are less successful than others. To get an idea, 20 minutes went to count how many black cats there were up for adoption on the site. There are unfortunately far too many of them (we stopped after an hour), but of the 1,023 cats we listed, 186 had an entirely black coat, or 18.1%. A substantial figure, although, as we know, difficult to interpret without knowing the number of births of black cats in France.
Not Instagrammable Enough
But, then, why are black cats unloved? In Nîmes, post Covid-19, SPA volunteers ensured that future adopters chose their future companions much more according to their hair than their character. “They want a small, long-haired plush,” they reported to France Bleu. Because if Coco Chanel swore only by black, for others, this color would not be aesthetic enough, or even not Instagrammable enough. “When I wanted to adopt a cat, one of my acquaintances told me not to take a black one, because they were impossible to photograph”, tells us Diane, a cat lover.
Coralie Lallier, president of the Feline Association of Cergy-Pontoise, confides to 30 Million Friends that when adopters have a choice, “they will turn to another animal”. The latter assures that even among the volunteers, “some host families have refused to welcome black cats”. If they do not really advance explanations, it is because many are, according to Coralie Lallier, “ashamed of being superstitious and do not want to admit it”.
Satanic Orgy Masters
These beliefs around the black cat, however, go back very very very far and should raise some cautious eyebrows today. In Europe, it started in 1233 with the writing Vox in Rama, in which Pope Gregory IX evokes the unfolding of evil ceremonies, organized by heretics. If you speak Latin, here is the text, otherwise I will summarize you: diabolical orgies are described there whose master would be a black cat with a twisted tail and the size of a dog (a little Marseillais this Grégoire IX). Following this publication and throughout the Middle Ages, black cats were considered incarnations of the devil.
Although no such story is written today, the black cat still drags its reputation. Especially in popular culture where he is for example the faithful companion of witches, like Salem in Sabrina the Teenage Witch (this reference is not for you 2000s). The SPA also regularly takes advantage of Halloween parties to break some prejudices about black cats and remind us that these little creatures “are victims of superstition from another time”.
