The black cat with a white spot

Almost every owner of an ordinary black cat notices that their pet will now and then sport a little white patch — sometimes in the most conspicuous place, sometimes in the most secluded corner. An entirely black face is occasionally set off by white side-whiskers, but commonest of all is a little “tie” on the chest. Why should this be?

It is in fact a relic of a far from happy period in the history of cats. The ancestors of black cats were noticed as long ago as by the ancient Phoenicians, who carried some of the sacred animals — these very cats among them — out of Egypt, and so set them wandering about the Mediterranean. During those wanderings the popularity of black cats rose sharply, because the camouflage nature had “issued” them made them all but invisible at night, and they caught mice and rats with stunning efficiency. The population of black cats spread across the whole of Europe, until in the Middle Ages they came to be associated with magic and witchcraft.

For the next few centuries the animals were persecuted. The Christian Church staged an annual ceremony of burning black cats alive on the feast of St John. Under this cruel ritual black cats were declared “Satan’s spawn”, hunted out everywhere and thrown into the fire alive. But in the view of the zealous ministers of the cult, the devil’s servants had to be absolutely black. Any white hair at all was read as a divine sign that spared the cat.

The persecutions left fewer and fewer wholly black cats, while the number of cats with white markings rose steadily. Religion had altered the pressure of natural selection.

In the seventeenth century, as the persecutions began to peter out, a new danger overtook black cats. A belief gained ground that they — or most of them — were an unfailing remedy for a whole host of ailments and diseases. The tail of a black cat, buried in the ground under the threshold of a house, was supposed to protect every member of the family living there from illness and failing health.

Edward Topsell, the English naturalist, wrote in 1658 that to cure blindness or any other disease of the eyes the following was needed: “Take the head of a black cat, without a single white hair, and burn it until it turns to powder; then put what is left in a little clay pot and, with a bird’s feather, blow it into the eyes three times a day.” So years of religious terror gave way to medical quackery. Is it any wonder that most black cats today are the owners of white “patches” — a sure defence against human stupidity?

Now, ever since cat shows began, a third round of selection has been under way — the so-called “fight for purity of breed”. Only wholly black cats, without the least fleck of white, win the right to breed. The standard lays down that “the coat must be dense, without a single white trace”. That remark is evidence that the telltale white patches keep appearing on a cat’s coat with enviable persistence, even after a century of deliberate, purposeful selection.

Owners of non-pedigree black cats with white markings naturally find it pleasanter to think of them not as a flaw or a sign of mixed blood, but as evidence of an early period of feline history.