Illustration © Kaitlynn Copithorne
We all know about the connection between black cats and witchcraft. From Sabrina the Teenage Witch, to Thackery Binx from Hocus Pocus, the stereotype runs deep in popular culture. But the cat as an agent of the devil or a witch’s familiar isn’t just an invention of Hollywood; it has historical precedent in the witch trials.
I adopted Berlin, a black tuxedo cat, about six years ago. Having always lived in and around Salem, Massachusetts, and after adopting a cat of my own, I became increasingly curious about the connection that our feline friends have with magic, particularly in regards to the infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692. As it turns out, there are a number of documented examples of how cats were used as evidence against the accused.
One of the first to be accused, at the time of the trials, was an enslaved woman named Tituba. At first, she maintained her plea of innocence, but during the course of her examination, a brutal and humiliating questioning and physical exam, she eventually "confessed." When asked whether she’d encountered anything strange, Tituba replied, “I saw two cats, one red, another black [and] as big as a little dog.” She was then asked what the cats said to her, and she answered, “They say to serve them.” (Godbeer, 86).
A similar claim occurred a few months later—during the examination of Sarah Wilson Sr.—when Reverend Increase Mather recorded she’d seen the devil. When pushed to describe the form that the devil took in visiting her, Mather recorded that the devil had appeared to her in the shape of a cat.
But perhaps the most fascinating references to cats from the Salem Witch Trials appear in documents related to Samuel Wardwell. Those documents claimed that twenty years before the trials, Wardwell had encountered a group of cats behind the Bradstreet family’s house, the Bradstreets including the first poet published in the American colonies, Anne Bradstreet, and her husband, a governor of Massachusetts, Simon Bradstreet.
“Constable Foster of Andover said… that being once in a discontented frame, [Wardwell] saw some cats together with the appearance of a man who called himself a prince of the air and promised him [that] he should live comfortably and be a captain, and required said Wardwell to honor him,” (Ibid., pp 142).
Wardwell was one of the last individuals to be executed as an accused witch in Salem, hanged along with seven others. He was known as many things during his time, a Quaker, an amateur fortune-teller, a farmer who could coax his cattle into following him at will, and in essence, a “witch.” It should be noted, however, that none of the accused were witches, and there is no evidence that the individuals who were wrongly imprisoned, tortured, or hanged during the witchcraft hysteria practiced any sort of magic, aside from the occasional “witch cake,” otherwise known as urine cake, practiced by some as a form of “counter-magic.”
My cat Berlin is magical in other ways, too. While adopting him, I realised he is a polydactyl, so instead of only having five claws on each front paw, he has seven. This means that he effectively has thumbs, cute, dangerous, thumbs.
Polydactylism, which is quite common in cats, gives the animals a unique appearance, which over the centuries has come to be associated with magic. Today, the New England coastal region is home to some of the highest rates of feline polydactylism (Lettice, 979), so it is likely that polydactyl cats were among the first brought to the New World by the early Puritan settlers. Perhaps even Tituba’s “talking cats” were polydactyl.
We know black cats were targeted in the witch trials. It’s important to remember that along with the fear of magic and the devil was the fear of the unknown or unusual. In the Puritan society of early Salem, the “civilized” society of towns and villages were blessed by God, while the wild woods were where witches danced with the devil. All cats, and animals, could be regarded as sources of fortune, misfortune, or familiar spirits.
There is a preserved non-polydactyl cat on display in the Aître Saint-Maclou in Rouen, France, which is believed to be from a black cat, meant to ward off bad luck. Cats were often taken on long voyages as mousers, and polydactyl cats were also believed to bring good luck (Hartwell). One could venture that this genetic mutation would sometimes make them targets in witch trials, too. Polydactyl cats may have had an even harder time than their lesser toed siblings during the Witch Trials, especially when a simple interaction with a cat might have been enough cause to be sent to the gallows. Luckily, no cats were recorded as being harmed during the Salem Witch Trials, though two dogs were executed as familiars. Even so, I think most cats have it better today.
Some people say magic is synonymous with creativity. If so, perhaps the polydactyl cat was Ernest Hemingway’s familiar, or muse. Hemingway said that he was once given a polydactyl cat named Snow White by a ship captain. He fell in love with the cat’s extra toes and so he bred her offspring specifically to carry the mutation. Consequently, another name for a polydactyl cat is a Hemingway cat. Today the Hemingway museum in Key West, Florida is home to around 40-50 polydactyl cats, most of whom are descendants of Snow White.
All cats are magical. Berlin in particular, as a black cat and polydactyl and Salem resident, could certainly have been a familiar. Contrary to what was reported during the Witch Trials, he can’t talk. But if he could, I doubt he would offer me my heart’s desire. Instead, he would most likely say that I wasn’t feeding him enough, or that I’ve been petting him incorrectly. Come to think of it, I think he would demand that I serve him—as though that’s not already the case. He can’t cast spells either, but there is no denying the wonder I feel whenever he graces me with his presence. And that magical role of the familiar can still be found in the writer’s pet who constantly paws at the keyboard; I don’t think the association with cats and mysticism will be going away any time soon.
Works Cited
Godbeer, Richard. The Salem Witch Hunt: a Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martins, 2018.
Lettice, Laura A., et al. “Point Mutations in a Distant Sonic Hedgehog Cis-Regulator Generate a Variable Regulatory Output Responsible for Preaxial Polydactyly.” Human Molecular Genetics, vol. 17, no. 7, 2007, pp. 978–985., doi:10.1093/hmg/ddm370.
Hartwell, Sarah. Polydactyl Cats, 2001, messybeast.com/poly-cats.html.