Before I begin, a little musical number to celebrate.
Farmyard Fridays is back, perhaps not regularly, but at least for this week and at some stage in the future. It has been almost four months since the last Farmyard Friday, and it would therefore obviously seem appropriate to pick up where we left off in April: cats.
Cats are very topical given that one paid a nocturnal visit to my room last week, entirely uninvited and unwelcome at 1.30am. Since then I have slowly boiled in my bedroom at night because I'm now too terrified to open the windows any further than a crack. This is probably now Cats 4 Humans 0, only this time I'm almost irritated by this.
Being afraid of cats is a reasonably common occurrence, or at least a dislike of felines is something I come across quite regularly. People don't like their attitude, their eyes, their general demeanour. It has to be said, they can be very huffy. Gatecrasher Cat, for instance, after falling out my bedroom window sort of huffed around and acted like I was the one being unreasonable. As I covered in April, a perception of cats as being evil can be traced back to Pope Innocent VIII. This view has been developed over the ages to encompass all sorts of things.
This is a Farmyard Friday Fact, but is perhaps rather more tied up in myth and legend than biological fact. However, I think exploring some of the myths around animals is equally as interesting as knowing why goats have rectangular pupils so I am going to plough on because, after all, The Only Way is Bullen.
One myth surrounding cats (and one that did flash through my mind last week when I was inches from Gatecrasher Cat's face) is that they will lie on top of sleeping babies and smother them. It's unclear whether this is actually true or not; I've never read of anybody this has happened to. There have been some scientific(ish) explanations given, such as cats smelling milk or liking the warmth of the baby. However, perhaps a more sociological explanation is possible. To understand it fully, let's go via The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (well it's about a cat, sort of...) where we learn of the background to the White Witch:
"But she's no Daughter of Eve. She comes of your father Adam's...first wife, her they called Lilith. And she was one of the Jinn."
Mr Beaver, Chapter 8.
Yes, Adam's first wife, Lilith. No, don't reach for your Old Testament; you won't find her (believe me, I've tried). Lilith is a figure who first appears in a different religious text, the Babylonian Talmud, a female demon. She sort of ducks in and out of myth and legend until she reappears in Jewish folklore in about the 700s AD as Adam's first wife created out of the earth. From there many myths grow up about Lilith, such as how she mated with an archangel and refused to return to Adam and the Garden of Eden. Suffice to say, the divorce proceedings were edited out of Genesis.
In Spain, Jewish folklore developed to see Lilith become a black vampire cat who sucked the blood from sleeping babies. By any standards, she was a busy woman, especially one made primarily out of mud or sand. Also, infinitely more exciting sounding than Eve, but that's by the by. The important thing here, though, to bring us back to the reason we're all here, is that idea of a black cat being somehow connected to demons and the Devil. Here, perhaps, is the reason why people believe cats may smother babies in their sleep. It does sound fairly unlikely, but then so does people burning cats on the say so of the Pope, so never doubt the power of religion in changing our perception of cats (or indeed any animal - I say again, wait for the Farmyard Fridays Christmas Special).
Anyway. Farmyard Friday Fact #10: The suspicions of cats smothering babies in their sleep can probably be traced back to the myth of Lilith in Spanish-Jewish folklore.
But, you know, what he says...
Gratuitous cute cat pic:
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