As early as 2890 BC, cats were worshipped gods in ancient Egypt, Bastet, and Buster usually had the appearance of an owl-headed human woman.
Baxter
At the Battle of Pelusium in 525 BC, the Persians, because of their knowledge of Egyptian culture, painted cats on shields and even held cats as "hostages." The Egyptian army, fearing to hurt the cat god and incur the wrath of the goddess Buster, fled the battlefield and lost a country.
War-plagued ancient Egypt, cats began to be displaced, and with the war entered the European continent. In order to prevent rats from eating books, it became popular to keep cats in various monasteries. Out of faith in the church, the people learned the church's practice and began to raise cats at home. The cat has since fallen from the altar and entered the homes of ordinary people.
But the good times were short-lived.
Because the cat has been difficult to domesticate for many years, its eyes glow at night, and people begin to associate it with the image of the devil Satan. In addition, female cats actively courting male cats and will recklessly hey in front of humans, which is a violation of Christian sexual morality. By the twelfth century, some theologians believed that the word cathar was derived from "catus," and cats began to be identified as incarnations of the devil.
Beginning in the fourteenth century, under the impetus of some "ignorant" church personnel, Christians began to kill cats to death in various ways to show success in killing "Satan/Devil" and increase their sense of mission to God to show their high respect for God.
In medieval manuscript illustrations, cats often play with dying mice as a symbol of the devil ravaging sinners.
In medieval literature, evil women often transform into cats, and cats can also become women due to demon possession. While the perception of ordinary people comes from churches and books, the stigmatization and demonization of cats has continued for hundreds of years.
Including the famous "Grimm's Fairy Tales" in the 19th century, the evil witch depicted in the story, always accompanied by an evil cat.
The Christian killing of cats lasted for centuries. The Black Death of the mid-14th century killed about a third of Europeans. It is inextricably linked to the almost extinction of cats, leading to rampant plague.
Witch hunting and cat slaughter, these cruel and bloody events occurred in the era when Europe experienced the Renaissance (14th-16th centuries), the Great Geographical Discoveries (15th-17th centuries), and the Scientific Revolution (16th-17th centuries), which was the era when human beings gradually moved towards civilization.