The Ark

Katharine Rogers, Professor of Literature at Brooklyn College in New York, relates how cats have been a focus of religious beliefs and superstitions since Ancient Egypt.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

THEME

Rachael Kohn: Man's best friend is the Dog, but woman's best friend has usually been the Cat.

Hello, I'm Rachael Kohn and this is The Ark on ABC Radio National.

Today, we aim to find out the true origins of Catwoman. Why have women been associated with cats in the popular imagination? It goes back a long way, and some of it's good news and some of it's decidedly bad. From ancient Egypt to 19th century Europe, cats have figured in religious beliefs and superstition.

Kay Rogers is Professor Emerita of English at Brooklyn College, and she's written a compendium called The Cat and the Human Imagination. She now lives in Maryland but did visit Australia and was surprised by the attitudes to cats that she encountered.

Kay Rogers: I was kind of shocked. We were going on a tour and the guide passed a cat and he said, 'Oh, I would love to run it down, but I can't get blood on somebody else's car'. Well fortunately he didn't, because there would have been unpleasantness if he had. And then in the zoo, in the Sydney zoo, there's a sign that more or less deplores the arrival of the cats in Australia. You know, God put cats in every continent except Australia and so who are we to bring them here?

Rachael Kohn: That's true, there's a deep-seated belief that they pursue the native wildlife.

Kay Rogers: And of course the humans do, pursue the native wildlife also and nobody says the humans should go.

Rachael Kohn: That's absolutely true. Now in antiquity the Egyptians defied cats, but were they nice to them generally?

Kay Rogers: I'm sure they were. In general, the Egyptians were fond of animals, in fact there's a Greek poet who makes fun of them for being sentimental about animals, in other words, being nice to them. And you've got tomb paintings of the family cat sitting under the mistress' chair eating a fish, there's a nice painting of the family cat enjoying an outing with its family, hunting waterfowl; the family mourned when the cat died, so I would say what evidence there is, would suggest that the cats were valued parts of the family.

Rachael Kohn: Well what about in the European context? Who gives us the first really positive impression of the cat?

Kay Rogers: Apart from the Egyptian evidence, there are very touching monuments to children that show the child holding a beloved kitty. There is a wonderful poem by an Irish monk called 'Pangur Ban' which means 'Beautiful White Pangur' (that was his cat's name) where he talks about, well he compares the cat's pursuit of mice to his own pursuit of the meaning of texts, and very beautifully conveys the sort of quiet companionship you can have with a cat. I think that's the 8th century.

Rachael Kohn: Well I would have thought that that value, the very fact that a cat can hunt down mice and rats, would have endeared it to Europeans; when did cats become seen as agents of the devil?

Kay Rogers: I think the question of agent of the devil is pretty complex. It has to do for one thing with the church's disapproval of fraternising with animals; animals after all, do not have a soul, at least according to orthodox teaching, and there's something unnatural about humans being friends with them, any kind of animals. And then the cat's personality, I mean its aloofness, its silent comings and goings, its refusal to defer to human wishes, all of these things arouse suspicion and hostility in people, and people were already predisposed to see the devil everywhere, so they sort of naturally came to see demonism in cats.

Rachael Kohn: Well they certainly wouldn't have got any positive impression of the cat from the Bible, because I don't think the Bible mentions a cat.

Kay Rogers: Never.

Rachael Kohn: That's really odd, isn't it? Perhaps it was in opposition to Egyptian culture and its love for cats?

Kay Rogers: Well it could be, and of course they were very hostile indeed about the idea of animal deities of any kind. My feeling is it just didn't come up. Actually dogs do not get much favourable mention in the Bible either. I think the Biblical writer's more interested in sheep and the obviously useful livestock.

Rachael Kohn: Well you write in The Cat and the Human Imagination your book, which really collects so many of the customs and beliefs around cats, you actually recount a very pervasive and strange logic, and that is, if a cat was bashed and then a woman was sighted with the same scars on her, she'd be accused of being a Catwoman, plausible but pretty made. Were cats used as an excuse to persecute women as witches?

Kay Rogers: I wouldn't put it quite that way. There was a widespread belief that witches could transform themselves into cats, also however, into hares. And the spell that they used was written down by the Witchfinders. So witches were supposed to transform themselves into cats, and then whatever happened to the cat would have happened to the woman.

I'm thinking of one story called 'The Haunted Mill', for instance, where the miller was intolerably disturbed by a noise in the mill and finally a brave young man went in to sort of disenchant it. He went in with his Bible and a candle I guess, and two cats came into the room, and obviously annoyed that he was there, and one of them tried to bat out the candle, and the Bible I guess, particularly bothered them, and he struck off the paw of one of the cats. Next morning the miller's wife was reluctant to appear and when she did come, they saw she was missing a hand. And then of course they understood what had been going wrong in the mill all this while.

Rachael Kohn: Goodness, a gruesome tale. How deeply etched is that notion of women as cats?

Kay Rogers: Very deeply, I would say. Bastet was the Goddess of female sexuality, maternity and the home.

Rachael Kohn: Bastet, the Egyptian God?

Kay Rogers: The Egyptian God, yes, and Aristotle comments on the aggressive sexuality of the female cat, which he does not approve of, prostitutes were cats as early as the 14th century, mediaeval preachers liked to identify roaming cats with roaming wives. Then people began to see that cats are beautiful and women are beautiful and you get pictures of the two of them together sort of enhancing each other.

Rachael Kohn: Isn't there even a cat in the Leonardo da Vinci painting of the Virgin Mary?

Kay Rogers: Could well be, and this is the other side, because cats are also associated with the home, and women are associated with the home. So we do find cats with the virgin. More often we find the cat as a sort of hostile figure in a holy picture, but there is for instance a painting of the virgin, as nursing Jesus and there's a cat nursing her kittens sitting on the virgin's robe.

Rachael Kohn: So the cat could be seen as a symbol of virtue, or at least a benign presence?

Kay Rogers: Yes, exactly. There is that strain as well.

Rachael Kohn: And that's in absolute contrast to the notion of the black cat who crosses your path. Now that's still a pretty pervasive superstition. Do we know where that first emerged?

Kay Rogers: No, this is the problem with folklore, because nobody knows. All we can is the earliest time it was written down, and of course the story of the belief could have been around for centuries before anybody thought of writing it down. The black cat was, in the days of witchcraft, considered particularly sinister. On the other hand you have the lucky black cat, there's Matagot, of French folklore, of which Puss in Boots is the most striking example, the cat that brings luck. Now maybe he brings luck with the devil's help, but you might be glad to get the help anyway wherever it came from.

Rachael Kohn: I think there's another cat that brings fortune, that's Dick Whittington's cat.

Kay Rogers: There I think the point is how wonderful it would be if you never heard of cats and you were over-run with rats and mice and all of a sudden this miracle animal appears. There are several stories of this sort around. But that's really the cat is following his nature. Puss in Boots is a magic cat, but Dick Whittington's cat is just a regular cat, he's good at catching mice.

Rachael Kohn: Well Kay, speaking about nature. the cat is often characterised as self-assured, independent, nimble, definitely an individual. Were those characteristics valued at a later time, perhaps in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Did the cat become more of a positive symbol?

Kay Rogers: I would certainly say yes, that modern cat-lovers are not upset by the fact that the animal does not give us respect for example. They don't get indignant because cats are selfish because after all, we are selfish ourselves, and we accept it our animals. As opposed to the Victorian view of the sweet little spirit of home, which the cat was.

Which brings me however, to the point that cats were appreciated for other reasons before we appreciated their independence and disrespect and things like that. In modern times the first evidence of appreciation for cats comes among 17th century French aristocrats who are responding to the time and the elegance. And this can really be pinpointed quite nicely in the fairy story called 'The White Cat', which was written down by Madame d'Aulnoy in 1698. 'The White Cat' there is a salon hostess really, she's a lady, the handsome young prince falls in love with her as a cat, even before she turns into a lady at the end of the story. So this is the cat as charming, elegant creature. Then in the 19th century the cat is appreciated as a sweet little spirit of homely embodiment of homey-ness.

Rachael Kohn: Kay, what about the dog in all this? Has the cat always been compared to the dog less favourably, because the dog is the model of faithfulness, a Christian virtue.

Kay Rogers: Well more or less, yes. The classic text here is Bouffon, in his great Natural History, who turned his article on the dog into a panegyric on the dog and turned his article on the cat into a denunciation of the cat. And clearly, what was in his mind was well, he was responding to the fact that people were beginning to like cats and make pets of cats, and he was outraged at this, you know, how can anyone possibly esteem this undeserving animal. And this I would say has been the predominant view for up till the modern times really. But there were a few people, even in the 19th century who were appreciating the cat as being a more self-respecting animal than the dog.

Rachael Kohn: Well speaking of modern times, let's go to the present where we have Catwoman in the movies, and Garfield in the cartoon strip. Now I couldn't think of two more different kinds of characterisations of cats. Are either of them authentic, in your view?

Kay Rogers: I'm afraid I can't speak to Catwoman, but Garfield I do look at hopefully every day, in the hope of finding something that's insightful about cats, and I get disappointed every time. I think what's happened with Garfield is that he's become a self-indulgent human being, therefore has lost his point as a cat.

Rachael Kohn: I'd agree with you. I don't find him the least bit cat-like.

Kay Rogers: I mean when he sits in front of the TV set, switching the channel changer, well I mean one thing is obvious about cats is their incredible ability to focus on something for hours and hours. And it just doesn't make sense to have a cat whose mind skips around.

Rachael Kohn: Yes, he wouldn't be channel surfing. Kay, would you call yourself a Catwoman? Do you morph into a cat?

Kay Rogers: Actually I'm very fond of all animals, including dogs. And even rats and mice. Jeremy Bentham said he was one of the few people who liked cats and mice, and I'm sort of like that. So I think a house needs a cat and a dog.

Rachael Kohn: Well that's very fair and egalitarian of you. Kay, thank you so much for being on The Ark.

Kay Rogers: Well I appreciate the opportunity.

Rachael Kohn: Kay Rogers was speaking to me from Washington DC, and her book is The Cat and the Human Imagination, it's been called 'sheer catnip for the intellectual feline lover'.

Next week on The Ark, the strange tale of the murder of India's religious leader of Independence, Mahatma Gandhi, by a Hindu zealot.

THEME

Publications

Title: The Cat and the Human Imagination: Feline Images from Bast to Garfield
Author : Katharine M. Rogers
Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 1998