Cats Make Beautiful Women: Islam Versus Christianity

Old Maids at a Cat’s Funeral, John Pettit, 1789

The idea of a cat who turns into a woman is found in the legends of all countries and peoples.

—Fernand Mery

"There was once a black cat, and every night she would crawl up through a dark well deep below the ground. Then she would shed her cat skin and go to the owner of a nearby house in the form of a woman. They would savor the joys of love night after night until morning prayer at which time she would disappear below ground again. Every morning when he awoke he would find some money she left for him in appreciation of their time together. Through the years their friendship grew so strong that she helped his daughter go on pilgrimage to Mecca."  

—Moroccan folktale

Unlike similar stories from Christian lands, the Moroccan tale came from a culture that esteemed cats prior to the advent of Islam, and continued to do so afterwards. By contrast, here are three story plots from Christian Europe: (1) A man realizes that his demure young bride is really a cat when she drops to all-fours and chases a mouse. (2) A man awakens to find that a cat is lifting the latch to come into his bedroom. He cuts the cat's paw off with an axe, and realizes that his wife is not in the room. She comes home days later with a missing hand. (3) A man surprises a coven of black cats in the midst of a Satanic ritual. He slashes the leg of one of the cats with a sword, and his wife comes home the next morning with a sword wound in her leg.

Why cats, and why only female cats? Why not dogs? One night, Peggy had an erotic dream about our blue heeler (a beautiful dog with a delightful musk), and I learned from decades of walking dogs that the first thing people ask is whether it's a boy or a girl. Members of both species can be sensuously beautiful, and humans clearly care about their gender, so why are there no erotic stories about dogs becoming women and marrying men?

In pre-Enlightenment Christendom, stories about cats that could adopt the form of humans and humans that could adopt the form of cats accompanied the church's brutal subjugation of anything that represented mystery and sensuality. Although roosters and billy goats were also said to be consorts of Satan, they were comedic failures compared to the grace, beauty, and sensuality of cats and women. It was quite another story in the Muslim world. The following is from the Wikipedia entry Islam and Cats:

"In Islamic tradition, cats are admired for their cleanliness. They are thought to be ritually clean, unlike dogs, and are thus allowed to enter homes and even mosques... Food sampled by cats is considered halal [clean] and water from which cats have drunk is permitted for wudu [ceremonial cleansing]."

According to Islamic legend: cats won't walk across a Koran; they seek out people who are praying; they land on their feet because Mohamed blessed a cat by touching its back; the letter M on the forehead of tabbies is the imprint of Mohamed's fingers; Mohamed cut off his sleeve rather than disturb his cat, Muezza, who was asleep on it; Mohamed re-routed his army because a nursing cat was in their path. The following words of Mohamed are from the Hadith (a Moslem text second only to the Koran): "Affection for cats is a part of the faith;" and here are a few other other examples of the affection Muslims feel for cats: a 13th century sultan, al-Zahir Baybars endowed a still extant cat sanctuary in Cairo; cats are welcome in mosques;  and there was even a Medieval era cat hospital to which people brought food in the belief that doing so would win them the favor of Allah. I could go on.

No living thing fared well when Christianity dominated Europe, but when it came to unbridled cruelty, only heretics were persecuted as viciously as cats and women, and no women suffered more than "old maids," who, after being tortured, were often burned to death along with their cats. In what is surely the supreme irony of all time, Christians suspected that cats were causing the Black Death, and did their utmost to destroy the one animal that might have saved them. 

For decades, the city of Paris held yearly spectacles in which French monarchs presided over a religious celebration in which cranes hoisted iron cages filled with screaming cats above bonfires so the people could "...have the pleasure of seeing the violent movements and hearing the frightening cries that these poor unfortunate beasts are forced to make" (the words of Jean Meslier, a French priest of the period who, upon his death, was found to have been an atheist). If the Bible is God's word, why didn't God insert a verse to stop all this, something like, "Upon pain of hell, thou shalt never, for any reason, kill or torment any person or other creature wantonly or in my name"?

The cat's bad reputation among Christians originated in its high esteem by pagans. What Christianity couldn't appropriate (it made Christian saints out of pagan gods, and Christian holy days out of pagan feast days), it sought to destroy, and the cat's position was worsened by the fact that, unlike its predecessors, Christianity denied that non-humans had a soul. Because cats reminded the Holy Catholic Church and its Protestant off-shoots of women, the way was paved for stories in which, through the help of Satan, cats could become women and vice versa.

Cat in Arabic

When the Enlightenment robbed Christianity of much of its temporal power, the supposed supernatural relationship between cats and women degenerated into a low comedy about cats and old maids that continues to this day (it's a small step from being a "cat lady" to being a "crazy cat lady"). While being mocked was certainly preferable to being burned, the fact that men continued to feel threatened by any woman who could resist their masculine allure didn't speak well of men who, after all, had a long history of doing everything they could to make it legally and economically hard for women to survive without them.

Since every member of the cat family is referred to as "she" simply by virtue of being a cat, the threat to men that is posed by cats would not appear to come from any notion of women preferring cat masculinity to human masculinity, but rather from the fact that women and cats have a long history of being equated. I suspect that it would be hard to find a male cat hater who regards women as his equals, and when a 200-pound man proclaims his loathing of a ten pound creature that is scarcely aware of his existence, his first feeling wasn't hatred; it was the terror that came from having his self-image threatened by any creature's refusal to acknowledge his superiority.

Some relevant books, textual links, and a Youtube video that constitute a partial list of sources:

The Life, History and Magic of the Cat by Fernand Mery
Cats of Cairo: Egypt's Enduring Legacy by Lorraine Chittock
Secrets of the Cat: Its Lore, Legend, and Lives by Barbara Holland
http://www.thegreatcat.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_cats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Meslier
http://muslimheritage.com/article/cats-islamic-culture
https://www.animalsinislam.com/islam-animal-rights/dogs/ 
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF7pTSCP4UM)
https://www.dailysabah.com/life/2016/02/01/peaceful-cohabitation-inside-istanbul-mosque-with-cats-worshippers-enjoying-each-others-company

Beautifuls...the Name I Call My Cats

 

Brewsky and Sage

"What greater gift than the love of a cat." --Dickens

Peggy and I were lifelong dog lovers until we made a spur of the moment decision to get a cat (Brewsky) the day after our schnauzer died. That was seven years ago, and I soon started amassing a small library of books about cats and spending a lot of time thinking about the nature of cats. We now have four of them, and if we had any confidence that they would welcome a dog, we would get one of those as well, but it's their home too, and we're all but positive that they would hate sharing it with a dog. What follows are some observations and reflections about the nature of catness.

The love of a dog is a given. The love of a cat is a reward. The tragedy of dogs is that they have no place within themselves to call their own. Kick a dog, and he will still love you. Neglect to feed her, and she will still love you. Leave him tied to a stake on a sleety night, and he will still lick your hand in the morning. Dogs resolutely deny the wickedness of their humans, and this makes the life of an abused dog tragic beyond measure. By contrast, a cat reserves a part of herself for her alone, and will loathe you and avoid you if you deserve it. 

Our most sensitive cat, Ollie, can't compete for even his most treasured treat, and will quickly upchuck his entire meal if the least thing upsets him (Scully likes to eat the vomit). When I think of the millions of cats like Ollie who are abused, neglected, abandoned, or tormented by scientists, it's obvious that the larger part of my species are less deserving of good than are those animals that we regard as our inferiors. 

While dogs are respected for their willingness to die for their masters, cats are dismissed as "only in it for themselves," but while my friend, Sheryl, was napping, a burglar broke into her home, and was it her dog, Eliot, who alerted her to the danger? Noooo. Elliot hid under the sofa while Sheryl's cat yowled and stomped on her chest.

Ignorant people think that all cats are the same. Scully is the first to greet me when I've been out. Sage is our only cat who likes to ride on people's shoulders, and he and Scully will sometimes watch nature documentaries from start to finish. If I hear galloping feet when I crawl into bed for a nap, I know that Ollie is coming to join me. He is also the first on the scene if anyone is in distress, his compassion being so great that if he were human, I'm quite sure he would be a vegan.

Even so, our cats share some traits. For instance, if one of them is on a chair, and I move the chair, he or she will go along for the ride, something that I've never seen a dog do. Likewise, if I'm walking through the house, and a cat is in my path, the cat won't move when I will step over him or her. I've never tried this with a dog but what the dog would leap to his feet in a panic, threatening to wreck both of us.     

Brewsky, Ollie, Scully

I had imagined that, because cats are less gregarious than dogs, they would be less forgiving, so when we got Brewsky, I spent a couple of weeks worrying that the least mistake on my part would destroy our relationship. I went from that to chasing him through the house while cursing and waving my arms when he had been bad, which was much of the time. I had to conclude that he wasn't taking me as seriously as I hoped when he stared interrupting our chases by rolling onto his back so I could rub his belly. The fact is that if I step on the tail of a dog or a cat, he will look to me for assurance that I didn't do it on purpose, and then life will go on as normal. Likewise, if I scold a member of either species, she only asks that I quickly get over my anger.

The fact that cats aren't pack animals doesn't mean that they deserve their reputation as unloving. I rarely see one of my cats sleeping alone, and all of them want to be petted more than I want to pet them. As I write this, I have to get up every few minutes to shoo Scully away from Peggy's door because Peggy is asleep, and Scully is impatient for her to get up. Once she and Peggy have greeted one another, Scully won't ask for further attention, but it's vital to her that a greeting occur.

One trait that is shared by dogs and cats is their extreme alertness to their humans' movements. Neither species ever sleeps so soundly but what they know when I unwrap the cheese.

Cats are exceedingly tolerant, and so it is that at least one behavior which can lead to bloodshed among dogs goes practically unnoticed among cats. I refer to the fact that if one cat steals another cat's food, the victim will stand aside and watch the aggressor eat. This is true even if the victim is bigger and stronger, and even if the food is practically stolen out of his mouth while he's picking it up to eat it. I know from watching nature shows that lions exhibit no such tolerance, but then lions are pack animals.

From the many books I've read about cats, one seemingly unremarkable sentence stands out: "Cats are small predators," the point being that their thin bones make them susceptible to injury and therefore incapable of the rough play I enjoyed with dogs. The speed, strength, and agility of cats had blinded me to their delicacy.

I discovered another trait of cats on my own. Namely that they're sprinters, not endurance runners, so even a mediocre human can run down a fleeing cat if the cat has no place to hide.

Although our cats are content with living indoors, their teeth still chatter when there's a bird at the feeder.

Ollie's chair

Until they reach old age, dogs love to play. While I expected grown cats to play less than kittens, I had no idea of the extent to which adult cats would continue to change in this and other ways, or how abrupt and permanent the changes would be. For years, Ollie spent hours a day sitting on his hind legs in my office chair, his front legs resting on the chair's left arm. This behavior so represented his Ollieness to me that I couldn't imagine that he would suddenly and irrevocably stop doing it, but he did. Such changes are like little deaths.

Our cats clean our dishes, something that we never allowed our dogs to do. This isn't because we love our cats more, but because little dry tongues gross us out less than big wet ones. Brewsky tries to eat Peggy's food right from her plate, so she'll push him away, and a few moments later, he'll start slowly reaching out his big tabby paw in the hope that she won't notice. Our other cats are content to wait.

Every time I think that, finally, I'm starting to understand cats, we'll get another cat and I'll be made humble again. For instance, I had imagined that cats were finicky eaters until we got Sage, and I couldn't find a single food that we like that he doesn't.

Nowhere is the fabled curiosity of cats more evident than when their humans are doing something unexpected. Last week, I was in the laundry room drying the interior of a freshly washed bird feeder with Peggy's hair dryer when I chanced to look down and see Sage and Ollie looking up at me in wide-eyed wonder. "What in the HELL do you think you're doing?!" they demanded. 

The winter we got Brewsky, he took enormous interest in some shelving I was painting in the laundry room, so I had to choose between letting him join me at the risk of tracking paint all over the place, or locking him out of the room and listening to him cry at the door. I chose the former, it being difficult for me to say no to my cats unless the decision is a no-brainer. I'm forever reminding myself that, while I have all the power in the relationship, love and respect demand that I use it sparingly.

Everyone knows that cats spend a lot of time bathing (30% of their waking hours), but I hadn't realized that they are enthusiastic bathers of one another. I often find up to three of them in a circle, each one bathing another, and nothing confirms the group's acceptance of a new cat like bathing him or her. When we got our second cat, Ollie, Brewsky, who had lived alone for two years, immediately gave him a bath. It was one of my life's high points.

Please consider supporting my friend Jody's cat charity: https://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/

The State of Medical Care in America

The following is from a letter that I just wrote to a British friend.

It is my understanding that many in your country want to replace your public healthcare system with a private one. I will preface my comments by saying that few Americans can even afford medical care unless they have insurance, yet they can't afford insurance unless they are able to get it through their employer because the cost of anything beyond "catastrophic coverage" can easily exceed $20,000 a year. It doesn't help matters that insurance companies do everything possible to discriminate against those who are deemed likely to actually need medical care. 

Under Obama, such discrimination was banned, but Trump has returned to doing everything possible to allow companies to price "poor risks" out of the market or even to refuse coverage altogether. Those who support such discrimination tend to be healthy young Republicans who argue that they shouldn't have to pay more because other people enjoy less than optimal health (the unstated motto of the Republican Party is, "Me first and screw you"). Peggy and I had employer-sponsored insurance until we turned 65 and could go on the government plan called Medicare. It is the best insurance we've had had, but even so, we have to supplement it with private insurance, and insurance companies do their best to fool people into thinking they're getting more than they actually are.

Here are three examples that people in your country might bear in mind in regard to the imagined success of privatized healthcare. All three of these examples were in the news here last week.

(1) Nearly all insurance plans have "in network providers," i.e. medical providers who have agreed to accept a lower level of reimbursement in return for insurers throwing business their way. If, for whatever reason, a person elects to see an "out of network" provider, his or her insurance company will pay a much smaller percentage of the bill.

Because the Republicans are doing their utmost to deregulate and privatize anything and everything, more and more of America's ambulance services are going from being owned and run by municipalities and county governments to being owned and run by private companies. This means that if you have an emergency and have the bad luck to be taken to the hospital in an out of network ambulance, you can, and almost surely will, end up many thousands of dollars in debt because ambulances are damned expensive, and god help you if you need to be taken on a second ambulance ride from, for example, a small community hospital to a remote big city hospital; and double god help you if your condition is so dire that you need to be transported in an air ambulance.

(2) Insurance companies are moving in the direction of refusing to pay any of your ambulance and emergency room expenses if they (the insurance company) decide that you didn't really need to go the emergency room. One problem with this is that it relies upon the honesty of dishonest insurers. Another is that patients are often in no position to know whether or not that they can get by with either waiting to see a doctor during regular office hours, or, in the case of the larger urban areas, going to an "urgent care center," which is a clinic that provides speedy medical care to people who, although their condition doesn't appear to be life threatening, are in too much distress to wait until regular office hours. Obviously, there will be people who die because of this policy, but as every American with an IQ above 60 knows, the priority of insurance companies isn't with getting people the care they need but with maximizing profit. I suspect that the same is true of private anything.

(3) America's drug manufacturers have shown themselves especially eager to buy up the exclusive rights to manufacture drugs that are the only approved treatments for life threatening illnesses, and then jacking up the prices of those drugs by hundreds or thousands of percent, a practice that is entirely legal in the U.S., and that insurance companies refuse to pay for. The most infamous of these drug company profiteers was a man named Martin Shkreli who, literally overnight, raised the price of the only approved treatment for toxoplasmosis from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill (a 5,000% increase). Even so, Shkreli doesn't stand out for what he did, but for not bothering to offer the usual bullshit lie for why he did it, even claiming from behind his perpetual smirk that he deserved appreciation for not raising the price of Daraprim even more. After all, he said, it would have been legal. Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison last week, but it wasn't for the deaths he caused, but for fraud in a non-related case. He cried in self-pity in the courtroom, self-pity being the only pity of which he is capable.

America has the highest cost of medical care of anyplace on earth with 25% of the money going to insurance companies. The cost of healthcare in America increases yearly at a rate that is far beyond what almost anyone can afford, yet there is no end in sight because well-funded lobbies--like Big Oil, Big Pharma, the National Rifle Association, and the insurance lobby--owns Congress. Despite what it spends, America doesn't even have a high standard of medical care compared to other first world nations. 

I'll throw in a final example that didn't hit the national news but very much hit the news in our household.

(4) Peggy spent hours last week fighting over the costs of her drugs while in the hospital for back surgery. Her hospital bill alone--the surgeon and anesthesiologist will bill separately--for the twenty hour stay was $17,000). When it comes to their charges and business practices, hospitals appear to say, "If you can't trust us, the people who work to keep you alive, who can you trust?" but the fact is that "the people who work to keep you alive" are the last people you can trust because they: (a) refuse to give estimates, although charges for the same services differ dramatically from hospital to hospital; (b) are notorious for charges that are excessive and downright fanciful; (c) after their services are rendered, they refuse to send out itemized statements. In Peggy's case, her phone call was transferred from one office to another before she finally learned that she was being charged for at least one drug and one medical device that was neither ordered nor received. As is typical, she is unable to get the mistake corrected simply because it is not in the hospital's financial interest to correct it, this at a Catholic hospital that boasts of its "Christian values." 

The older I get, the more I become convinced that unregulated capitalism (which is what America's Republican Party assures us is the remedy for all of our ills) brings out the worst in people, and nowhere is this more obvious than when it comes to medical care. It speaks to the immorality of our system when a mugger with a gun receives a death sentence for murdering someone for $20, while a white collar thug like Martin Shkreli openly laughs about raising the cost of an essential drug to the point that only the rich can afford life.

It seems to me that people who voted for Trump fell into three main categories: the super rich who believed he would make them richer, which he has; fascists who believed he would inspire hatred and division, which he has; and the naive poor who believed that he was "the friend of the little man," which he most certainly is not. The people in the first two categories knew what they were getting; the people in the final category had no idea, and it is they who are being increasingly left to suffer and die as the government-funded medical care and economic assistance that they disproportionately rely upon is being slashed. Sadly, the Republican Party enjoys its greatest popularity among the very people whom its policies hurt the most, but how it does this will have to wait until another post.