Out of the broom closet, black cats, black dogs and white magick

The last day of October is the secular holiday Halloween, principally celebrated in America and a few other countries, and having its roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain, marking the end of summer and harvest time, and the eve before the Christian All Saints Day, November 1. 

It is customary for many American animal shelters to not adopt out black cats during the Halloween season, for fear they might come to harm, or suffer ritualistic killing at the hands of “witch covens,” or Satanists. Media has fostered the impression that many animals have been harmed, but in truth, most shelter directors don’t even believe the mythology and instead prefer to err on the side of cautiousness.

Black cats are particularly vulnerable to cruelty because of age-old myths connecting them to misfortune and evil. However, during the Inquisitions, or the “Burning Times” as witches refer to them, cats were condemned as the “witch’s familiar” and often tortured and killed along with accused “witches.” It was believed that witches could shape-shift into cats, or that the felines could embody evil spirits, although cats of any color were uniformly persecuted. In 1730s Paris, printers apprentices revolted, choosing their masters’ cats as a symbolic target for their revenge (because pet cats were fed better than apprentices) in The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Severin.

Most animal cruelty is attributed to troubled humans, not members of a particular religious sect, and true witches – practitioners of Wicca – are tired of unfair accusations. Wiccans are pagans who celebrate the earth and all of creation, including animals, and none of their observances or practices is based in evil or malice.

A Florida witch called Wren wrote, “It is instead the ‘thrill seeker,’ the wanna-be ‘Satanist’ ala Hollywood movie scripts, or the emotionally disturbed individual who perpetuates such crimes against animaldom. We join with the animal protection agents in the hope that the people who abuse cats and other animals will be caught and then prosecuted for their heinous and cruel acts.

“The larger professionally run animal shelters know that, indeed, it is not the Wiccans who are doing the abusing. Thanks to all of the concerned pagans who have written shelters, the newspapers, and town officials during the ‘scaredy cat’ seasons past, we have gotten the point across rather well.”

For animal shelters, black dogs and black cats represent an especially needy problem. Fewer black animals are adopted, therefore many more are euthanized – so much so that regarding the former, animal rescue professionals have dubbed the problem “Black Dog Syndrome.”

Kim Saunders, head of shelter outreach for Petfinder.com, an American website listing over 300,000 animals for adoption, recently told ABC News, “What we’ve learned is that large black dogs, and also black cats, tend to be the last ones to get adopted from shelters,” and added that one of the reasons she believes black animals are overlooked is that they don’t photograph as well as lighter-colored animals.

Sherry Skidmore, founder of the Utah-based Black Dog Rescue Project [www.blackdogrescueproject.com/] agrees and said that superstition about the bad luck of having a black cat, or the way black dogs are portrayed in movies as villainous or dangerous also compounds the problem. (Her website includes suggestions for how to better “market” black dogs.)

In many breeds, black is the genetically dominant color, and since many mixed-breed dogs claim the much-loved Labrador Retriever in their pedigree, it doesn’t help that many black dogs are large dogs; city dwellers frequently prefer smaller dogs.

Black Dog Syndrome remains a theory with no data to support it said Julie Morris, senior vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, “which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not true, but just that there is no data.”

 “Human nature leads people toward things that are more vibrant and riveting in color,” said Hope Hancock, executive director of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Wake County in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her shelter has a special program with posters of black dogs decorated with blue lights and adopters of black dogs receive a special discount from the regular adoption fee. They plan a similar program soon for black cats. The shelter also has a special section of their website dedicated to black animals.

Across the US, animal rescue professionals are making a special effort to obtain better photographs of black animals for adoption and to house black animals in well-lit areas of the shelter, as well as highlighting black animals during adoption events.

Those of us who have shared our lives with a black animal know that no special color blindness is required. From Black Beauty to appreciating the inkiness of a Bombay cat, we’re entranced by black magick. One of the most loyal and loving dogs I’ve had was a Black Lab who lived his first 11 years at the end of a chain until I convinced his former owners to release him to freedom and me. A black cat, a stray who stayed, spends most of her hours on my bed and I’ve happily discovered shed black hair is easier to isolate. Adopting any homeless animal holds its own rewards, but in the case of a black one who might not have received his or her deserving worship otherwise, perhaps there’s a little bit more of white magick therein.

Jim Willis

http://www.crean.com/jimwillis

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