Sp

>>2209223
I imagine cats have probably been historically linked with witches because they were thought to be demonic.

Other animals that Christians believed to be evil include snakes, bats, and owls.

"Evil" animals were sometimes killed in times of sickness and plagues, which was ironically counterproductive because all these animals happen to prey upon disease-causing vermin.

Every now and then, cats also have a "crazy time," where they'll whip around and run about for no reason while looking wide-eyed and frightened, which made some people theorize they could see ghosts, further linking them with the paranormal.

There was also the belief that witches could transform into a cat 9 times before permanently being stuck as a cat. Likely where the "cats have 9 lives" thing originated.

>>2209594
No, cats having nine lives originated from the same place that cats always landing on their feet did.

This is because cats have a very flexible spine, they can twist their entire bodies around in mid air, greatly increasing their chances of landing on their feet. Which greatly increases their chances of surviving a fall from a great height.

It's a lot easier to recover from a broken leg than it is to recover from a broken spine.

It's also really awesome to watch in slow motion.

Cats are solitary animals and thus seem weird for us, social beasts.
Connecting weird people and weird animals...

>>2209605
I think it's a mixture of both. The multiple lives come from how resilient they are, but the exact number probably came from the witch thing

>>2209223
toxoplasmosis causes magical powers

>>2209661
it literally turns you into a zombie

that's why we can't trust a cat owner's opinion on cats

Have you ever heard of the "crazy cat lady" in your neighborhood? Well those existed back then too.

Also: cat "pussy" back in ye olde times was a sexual slang (linking women and cats), so a convergence of promiscuous cats + crazy woman coalesced a lot of negative ideas and feelings into a bunch of related concepts (witches, spinsters, hags, etc.).