In life, there’s purr-fect (for example, our feline friends) and there’s imperfect (for example, history). History is written by the victors, which means it’s full of inaccuracies and misunderstandings. An unfair reputation completely based on misunderstandings landed on the black cat about 800 years ago.

There were a lot of cats around in the 1200s. Like, there were cats everywhere. This is because the roamin’ Roman Empire imported them from North Africa, especially Egypt. By the 1200s, Europe’s cat population had become huge. Also huge at this time? Superstition — particularly, the fear of witchcraft.

Unsurprisingly, given their personalities plus natural self-care abilities, kitties became companions for many solitary people, including elderly ladies. Equally unsurprising, given their natural stealth abilities, kitties sometimes got underfoot — and one tale from this era involves a tail seen running across a path at night (so: not necessarily a black one, given the lighting!) and scaring the horses of some travelers, who found a cat outside a nearby home and proceeded to stone it to death. (Who’s the bad character in this story, eh?!) Folklore has it that the owner was spotted the next day with bruises on her body in locations that matched the stoning. Witchcraft was immediately assumed.

Here’s where we get not one, not two, but three nasty, undeserved legends about black cats. First, the lazy assumption that black cats are companions to witches, and second, that they bring misfortune to anyone whose path they cross. But while those two superstitions sound silly, the third one’s a real reacher...

Still in the same time period, an order from the pope to exterminate black cats — for numerous reasons including, yep, witchcraft — met with a little too much enthusiasm and Europe’s entire cat population was radically reduced. Alas, within 100 years, the continent was ravaged by a massive plague known as The Black Death, which was spread by rats. Go figure: There were a lot of rats around in the 1300s. Like, there were rats everywhere. Some of this was due to there being almost no cats to control their population. As a result, gossip that’s obviously wrong has suggested that cats are ultimately at fault for rats causing the plague! To that we say, boo and hiss!!

One thing that never changes throughout history is that people enjoy some good gossip and some mean myths. False legends about black cats live on, especially in Europe and North America. (Famous American author Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 short story “The Black Cat” didn’t help!) But in numerous parts of the world, these negative myths simply do not exist; better still, black cats in those places are associated with good luck. Here’s a quick look at four cutting-edge (clawing-edge?) cat cultures.

Guess what? There’s another reason that blaming the Black Death on cats is wrong. It’s because the real root cause of that plague was not cats, not rats, but fleas. These bacteria-carrying pests infected all kinds of unwilling hosts — not just rats, but humans, dogs, and cats.

Fleas are still around today, and those little pests will be around forever. Worse, fleas will always go after your cats — and that’s every colour of cat. Here’s the good news: GCP’s Natural Flea Deterrent chews are a healthy, organic deterrent for fleas (and ticks and mosquitos). Want to know the best ways to prevent, detect, and treat fleas on your cat? We wrote a handy how-to, right here. And, given that the most infamous legend in this article involves a black cat crossing someone’s path, want to know how to take care of an outdoor cat? We wrote a handy how-to, right here.