Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th is generally considered an unlucky day for everyone, except for people born on the thirteenth day of any month. Since I was not born on the thirteenth, I prefer not to take any chances. Am I superstitious? Let's just say I do not believe in tempting fate. That is, I try not to walk under ladders or break mirrors, although I have done both. Accidentally. Seven years' bad luck times two for breaking a couple of mirrors; unfortunately, they were consecutive sentences, not concurrent ones.

Being somewhat of an authority on cats, if I must say so myself, superstitions about black cats being bad luck are simply false. There are variations on the theme, however, such as while it is considered good luck to have a black cat visitor, it is bad luck if the black cat decides to remain permanently. If that were true, then while Yoda was a feral cat visiting my deck, I would have had good luck, but now that he is my housecat, I have bad luck. The truth is that my luck has remained neutral.

Perhaps Yoda is a so-called witch's cat, since he is pure black. Okay, he's got one or two white hairs on his belly, which coincides with the legend of black cats. Once upon a time, black cats had been considered evil, which is why pure black cats are extremely rare nowadays. (If there are any pure black cats, they are a result of special breeding, or so I have read.) According to legend, black cats were redeemed, if you will, by getting their white hairs, making them no longer evil.

But black cats were not considered bad luck or evil in all nations. They were thought to be sacred in Egypt, for example, and they were considered to be good luck omens in England. It is in the United States and in certain European countries that black cats were thought to be the familiars of witches. But then in my lifetime, I have actually had a few people (three, to be exact, if memory serves me correctly) tell me that cats, of any color, are evil because they can suck the life out of a baby. College-educated people, believe it or not. And that only goes to show that prejudices instilled in childhood can last a lifetime.