Old Wives' Tales About Cats: Truth and Fiction

I grew up in rural Alabama, where I often heard old wives' tales recited by my grandmother, a Deep South country woman born during the Great Depression. Among the many other topics that she invoked during her long, rambling stories about my distant cousins and aunts, her stories would often focus on the evils of cats.

My grandmother was terrified of cats. She often spoke of the idea that cats have a connection with the devil, and would claim that they had demonic powers that enabled them to cheat death. Above all else, she believed that cats were very dangerous to babies and young children. If she saw a cat walking across her yard, she would bolt the doors and keep all the children inside until it was gone. She firmly believed that all cats had a secret mission to kill every child they encountered.

I was very surprised when I found out that my grandmother's stories, like many legends, actually had a grain of truth to them. Here's what science says about the "demonic powers" of cats.

Myth: Cats place curses on pregnant women.

One of my favorite family stories, which my grandmother would tell solemnly on dark nights, involved my great-great-great aunt, who was, by all accounts, a very angry woman. According to my grandmother, she hated cats, and took great pleasure in abusing them. My aunt had one cat that she hated most of all, and she spent a lot of time bullying her. She scorched the cat's face with matches, drowned every litter that the cat gave birth to, and often kicked or hit the cat for no reason at all.

When she was pregnant with her first child, my great-great-great aunt took particular delight in mistreating the cat because she believed superstitiously that cats were responsible for almost all of society's ills. She gave birth to her first child early, and he weighed only four and a half pounds. Worse, he was also blind, jaundiced, brain-damaged, and had "all sorts of birth dee-fects" which ultimately led to his death within just three days.

True to form, my distant aunt blamed the cat, who she--and everyone else in my family--believed had cursed her for drowning the kittens. Grief-stricken and angry, she strangled the cat the night after her son's death and spent the rest of her life unable to bear children. She maintained until her death that it was because the cat cursed her.

Karmic retribution is not something that is scientifically verifiable, and it's a matter of opinion as to whether my aunt's loss was the result of her abuse of the house-cat. Surprisingly, though, it is not a farfetched idea that the cat might have actually played a role in the premature birth and death of my superstitious aunt's baby.

Cats often carry a parasite called toxoplasma gondii, or toxoplasmosis. Although generally harmless to most people, it can be devestating if it is contracted by a pregnant woman. The parasite may be so mild that it goes unnoticed by the expectant mother, but it is passed easily and readily to the fetus. In about 1 in 10 cases, the effects are severe and noticeable, and lead to preterm birth, jaundice, blindness, and central nervous system damage--all of which were evident in my great-great-great aunt's newborn baby.

The parasite is trasmitted through cat feces, so the March of Dimes warns that all pregnant women and women who may become pregnant should avoid contact with cat feces. In addition to transmission occurring when a litter box is changed, the virus may also spread to an expectant mother when she eats food grown in soil that might have come in contact with cat feces.

Myth: Cats suck the breath out of babies.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is as tragic as it is unpreventable. Especially in my grandmother's time, many babies would pass away, seemingly inexplicably, in their sleep. This occurred with one of my grandmother's siblings, a baby boy who died at less than one month of age. The baby's family automatically attributed the death to a tomcat who sometimes slept in the house.

The belief that cats caused SIDS deaths occurs in print as early as 1609, and it was still a common belief during my grandmother's time. In fact, an article published in the Nebraska State Journal in 1929 quoted a doctor who emphatically swore that he had personally witnessed cats in the act of killing newborn babies. The physician stated that he had seen cats hunched over the limp, blue bodies of infants, with their mouths around the babies' mouths.

The reality is that sucking the breath out of a baby's lungs is something that cats are quite incapable of, biologically speaking. Not only would a cat be unable to physically accomplish this task, but it would also be utterly pointless. Why would any animal take another creature's carbon-dioxide-filled breath when there is plenty of fresh air to be had elsewhere?

However, there is a surprising grain of truth to the legend. Some cat care books, inlcuding You and Your Cat, published in 1986, warn that cats may accidentally suffocate babies in their sleep. Cats are drawn to warmth, and may eagerly cuddle up with a young child, especially on a cold night. Very young infants do not have the reflex to turn their heads away from the cats, or the strength to push them off, and it is theoretically possible for them to be suffocated under the circumstances.

There is only one reported case of this on record, when, in 2000, the mother of six-week-old Keiron Payne reported that she had found her son dead, with her cat lying on top of his face. Autopsy attributed his death to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, but the child's distraught mother maintained that it was the fault of the cat.

Whether or not cats may play a role in deaths generally attributed to SIDS is debated. While its risks are most likely exaggerated by people who are swayed by wives' tales, it is probably best to play it safe and keep cats out of nurseries during bed time and nap time.

Myth: A cat can easily kill a young child with a single scratch.

When I was about five, I came to visit my grandmother and happened to have a scratch from my neighbor's cat on my forearm. The amount of hysteria that my grandmother displayed as a result of this would have been laughable, had it not been upsetting. She cried and treated me like I was seriously ill, constantly checking on me and washing the tiny surface-scratch with hot water and grain alcohol.

My grandmother's fear of cat scratches wasn't entirely unfounded. As she later explained to me, her sister had been swatted on the ankle by a cat when she was seven years old. In a rural, impoverished area with no access to commodities like antibiotics and antibacterial soap, the scratch become swollen and infected, and led to the child's death within a matter of only two weeks. Having already lost two children to a problem he believed was caused by a cat, this led my great-grandfather to shoot over one hundred and fifty cats living in their area.

According to literature published by the Center for Disease Control, deaths from cat-transmitted bacteria are now very rare, but they were not unheard of in the nineteen thirties, especially in areas with poor nutrition and poor sanitation. Dubbed "cat scratch fever", infected cat wounds are now treated quickly and easily with antibiotics when required, and very few people suffer serious complications as a result.

Tragedy is difficult to bear, especially when it remains unexplained. To further enable ourselves to accept tragic events when they occur, we create superstitions and feable explanations. Isolating scapegoats to blame for tragedies--especially scapegoats that are not human--often gives us an outlet for our anger, and we milk it to its fullest. Unfortunately, cats have become the focus of blame for many tragedies throughout history.

My grandmother spent her entire life hating and fearing cats because of the havoc that she firmly believed they had inflicted upon her family. While the basis of these wives' tales may appear to be ludicrous at first glance, they actually present a surprising degree of truth.