Black cat

The black cat is considered both Lucky and unlucky in many cultures.
The black cat is a feline whose fur is uniformly black. It is not a particular breed of cat and may be mixed or of a specific breed. The all-black pigmentation is equally prevalent in both male and female cats, and typically skips one generation due to the characteristic’s association with the X chromosome. In Western history, black cats have often been looked upon as a symbol of bad omens although they are considered to be good omens in other cultures.

Witchcraft and superstition
Historically, black cats were symbolically associated with witchcraft and evil. In Hebrew and Babylonian folklore, cats are compared to serpents, coiled on a hearth.
Originally in Britain and Europe, a black cat crossing one’s path was (and still is) considered good luck; however they were also seen by the church as associated with witches. Black cats (and sometimes, other animals of the same colour) were sometimes suspected of being the familiars of witches. The black cat was still usually seen as good luck; however, in the USA and parts of Europe which were affected by the witch hunts the association with witches caused them to be considered as bad luck.
In places which weren’t affected particularly by witch hunts, they retained their status as good luck, and are still considered as such in Japan Britain, Ireland and Egypt.
However in Romanian and Indian culture, especially in the historical region of Moldavia in Romania and everywhere in India, one of the strongest superstitions still feared by many people is that black cats crossing their path represents bad luck, despite the fact that these regions were never affected by witch hunts or anti-paganism. Ralph Chaplin created the image of a black cat in a fighting stance, the IWW’s symbol of sabotage.
Since the 1880s, the color black has been associated with anarchism. The black cat, in an alert, fighting stance was later adopted as an anarchist symbol.
More specifically, the black cat - often called the “sab cat” or “sabo-tabby” is associated with anarcho-syndicalism, a branch of anarchism that focuses on workers’ rights. Anarchists, Situationists and Revolutionary Industrial Unionists such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) believe that a general strike could be the spark for revolution. (Mainstream unions in the United States of America do not support the general strike.) But it is the spontaneous surprise strike, which invariably occurs without union authorization, that is referred to as the wildcat strike.
In testimony before the court in a 1918 trial of IWW leaders, Ralph Chaplin, who is generally credited with creating the IWW’s black cat symbol, stated that the black cat “was commonly used by the boys as representing the idea of sabotage. The idea being to frighten the employer by the mention of the name sabotage, or by putting a black cat somewhere around. You know if you saw a black cat go across your path you would think, if you were superstitious, you are going to have a little bad luck. The idea of sabotage is to use a little black cat on the boss.”
Bohemian culture
Thophile Steinlen’s famous advertisement for the tour of the Chat Noir cabaret
Le Chat Noir (French for “The Black Cat”) was a famous 19th century cabaret in the notoriously bohemian Montmartre district of Paris. It was opened on 18 November 1881 at 84 Boulevard Rouchechouart by the artist Rodolphe Salis, and closed in 1897 (much to the disappointment of Picasso and others who looked for it when they came to Paris for the Exposition in 1900).
Black cats in American popular culture
The archaic associations of black cats with bad luck or evil once appeared frequently in North American popular culture, but are no longer widely held. In the early years of television several stations located on “unlucky” channel 13 made sport of the association by using black cats as mascots.
It is said that a black cat crossing your path is bad luck, but letting one in your house is good luck.
A black cat, either brought into or entering Shea Stadium on its own, walked onfield during the 1969 National League Eastern Division playoffs. The cat approached and circled Chicago Cubs third baseman Ron Santo while he was in the on-deck circle. This distraction was followed by the collapse of the Cubs and the success of the Mets in the late season, who overcame the Cubs’ eight-game lead in the playoff race to eventually win the division, the National League pennant and the World Series. The Cubs’ loss (and possibly the cat’s appearance) became another chapter in Cubs Billy Goat curse legend.
Eveready Batteries has used a black cat leaping through the digit 9 as its logo, one of the most recognized company trademarks in the US.
Witchcraft
Cats were often believed to be familiars of human witches. Cats are believed, by some Wiccans, to have the ability to sense the presence of spirits before humans notice them. Indeed, an experiment performed at Duke University in the United States lent support to this notion. In the experiment several animals, a cat amongst them, were brought to a house that was reputed as being haunted. The animals all behaved normally except in one room in which a murder had been committed. Here, several of them displayed strange behaviour: the cat, in particular, hissed for several minutes at an empty chair. It should be noted that the experiment would appear to indicate that the cat’s ‘extra-sensory’ abilities are not exclusive, but would seem to be relatively common within the animal kingdom.
Black cats, because of their ability to remain unseen in dark places or at night, were considered especially desirable partners for witches. Some witches were purported to have the ability to shape-shift into a cat nine times, hence the archaic belief that cats have “nine lives”Black cats were sometimes used in magical rituals, sometimes as purported participants, other times as sacrifices. In witch trials, ownership of a cat was often taken as “evidence” of Satanic association and witchcraft. Cats, believed to be evil in their own right, were often punished or burned alive along with humans during these trials.
Both historically and today, some religious and spiritual groups purportedly engage in ritualistic sacrifice of cats, though studies have mainly found that such reports belong squarely in the province of urban legend. Cats are never sacrificed in Wiccan rituals, since Wicca is a nature-oriented religion that encourages respect for animals. Many modern witches keep black cats as pets, and view them as sacred.
In Russia, there is still a popular belief that if a black cat crosses a person’s path in the street, that person should either choose a different direction in order to walk around the cat’s path or cross it holding a button in his/her fingers (it could be a button on a person’s jacket, pants, or shirt). References