Cats, if we talk about the internet era, then cats can be your favorite animal. But step out of the internet world for once, watch in your society, you all will be shocked after hearing people's opinions on cats, "You should not go ahead if cats crossing your path". One black cat is considered a bad omen, and these things did not start from now. It has a historical significance, also a dark past. When I will tell you about that in this blog post, then you will be shocked. But I will not go to the cat's history in the beginning, but I will compare the behavior of cats with that of our society. Such way people don't like cats behavior-wise, and then we will go to the history part.


1. Our Collectivist Society Can't Accept Cats

If you look behavior-wise, then a Cat is very different from other animals. The most loved animals in India, like cows, buffalos, goats, or dogs, can normally see these animals here. The reason for that is, these animals are collectivist nature-wise, they like to live in groups, and to be with humans. Indian society is also a collectivist one, even the individualistic animals are not considered good in these societies, so the cats are very far away. If you look and compare the cats with other animals, then they are very individualistic in nature, they don't like to be with humans that much. Cats usually run away from humans, and this is probably the first reason that our collectivist society can not accept an individualistic animal like a cat.

 

2. Cat's Relationship With Humans

If you talk about any other pet. Even if it is a dog or any other domestic animal, it subjugates itself before you. Your relation with your dog is of an 'owner' and the 'owned', and you keep that dog on a niche too, Maybe you don't see them as this directly, but pets accept this thing and you too agree with this. On the other hand, the relation of a cat with its owner is not of an owner and owned. They treat their owners like partners, demand equal respect, and don't like to live under the owner's control. People don't consider humans with these demands good, then cats are just animals.

 

3. Contribution of Cats

Look around yourself in your society, All the domesticated animals, They have a reason behind that, That the owner demands something back from the pet, Dogs provide security, Cows provide milk, And something is expected from all the domesticated animals, They say that we will care about these animals because they have a particular contribution to our life. Cats don't promise any particular contribution as such. And hence people consider cats as destructive animals, and other things as well, and hence cats are not seen of high value due to the lack of contribution in our lives from them This was about the behavioral aspect of cats, Due to which they don't get acceptance in our society.


4. Historical Aspects

Not we will talk about their historical aspect, From where the matter will become darker, And you will be shocked after listening to all those things. Cats do have a Historical aspect too, on which we should talk. There are many societies/religions which consider cats as bad and many consider them good. 

Cats are associated with the yin symbol in china, this means they are associated with shapeshifting, evil, and Darkness. It is said that black cats symbolize sickness and misfortune. 

But if you look at Japanese culture and Islam, then cats are considered good there, people respect them a lot. Cats are called goddesses of fertility in the Hindu religion, but overall you will see such examples like don't go anywhere after seeing a black cat, oppositely if they crossed your path. So these things too exist on a local level, but if you look at the larger aspect of these things.

If you zoom out of the situation then you will have to go to Egypt. During earlier times in Egypt, cats were respected so much that time they are considered gods by that time. They had made different ways of worshipping cats. 

But as Christianity expanded then all the old religion's symbols and god-goddess were seen as evil and cats were included in that too. Like in 1233, Pope Gregory- "I sent a message to people that cats are used in witchcraft", he even said that "the black cats are lucifers...".

Now in the year 1484, Pope Innocent XIII properly wrote, That all the cats must be excommunicated, He even said that cats must be burnt And then a problematic situation was created there when people started burning the cats Even dropped them from rooftops, and they used to perform this as a ritual every year, Even now this thing is celebrated in Belgium symbolically.

Where stuffed cats are burnt and dropped now, But that is just a continuation of that ritual only, where they used to do all this with real cats, It is not like that somebody was benefitted from this, Some historians actually wrote that the whole black death incident which happened in this area, which spread especially due to rats,

The actual reason behind that was the cats were scared there. The cats were reduced to such a number that there were so many rats there. Otherwise, nature has made everything accordingly so that a balance must be there. But when humans do such foolish acts, then nature is disturbed, And this thing was also tried to be suppressed by people, People said that the plague could have been spread by the cats too Like it is spreading through rats. But the truth was that there were bad things done with nature. Due to which a whole species was disturbed, And hence humanity also had to suffer.


5. Pop Culture

If you look in the pop culture too, you will see cat's reference only where something bad is happening, Some dangerous villains will be holding a cat only, They are always shown associated with them, and due to all this, an image is formed in your mind that, we have to associate this animal with bad things, which is really sad.


Conclusion

But thankfully, due to the internet and youtube. People are now liking cats in videos at least. Today too, people stop whenever their cats cross their ways And don't consider black cats good, But they share their videos, so the internet has done an icebreaker for this. The previous misconceptions are not being shattered by the internet, and I hope they keep shattering in the future too.

I want to end this post with a quote from the book extraordinary cats by Olivia Manning- 

                    "tough, unbiddable little animal that, once worshiped as a god, later harassed as an agent of the devil, tortured as a symbol of wickedness and burnt as a concert of witches has had a suffer more than its share of human stupidity". 

          She delivered such a serious thing in so few words and I hope this is your talk away from this video too. That we should stop the problems faced by an entire species due to human stupidity, and I hope you will send this message ahead by sharing this post,

 

Jai hind. Vande Mataram.