10.26.06
Why Do Cats Have Nine Lives?
There are very many wonderful (and some not so wonderful) euphemisms, anecdotes and sayings in the English language about cats. Ever wonder why people say cats have nine lives? We did! And here’s what we found out:
One reason, which is fairly obvious, is that cats are very resilient and crafty, and can survive falls from great distances with their ability to absorb shock (although many stupid people overestimate this and don’t protect cats from falling to their deaths from high windows). Cats, being their tenacious selves, gracefully skirt near-death situations, making them seem like they have multiple lives. But why the number nine?
The number nine was a lucky, mystical, or magic number because it is the Trinity of Trinities (3 x 3). As cats seem able to escape injury time and time again, this lucky number seemed suited to the cat. While in most countries the cat is said to have nine lives, in Arab and Turkish proverbs poor puss has a mere seven lucky lives and in Russia, is said to-survive nine deaths.(source: Paws For Proverbs)
The Egyptian Goddess Bast, or Bastet
Another possible origin is Ancient Egyptian mythology, when cats were worshipped as gods in Ancient Egypt (ahhh, those were the days!). Justine Hankins claims that the number nine is associated with various Egyptian gods and cats, but we haven’t been able to fact-check these statements. Any Egyptolo-cats out there who have any insights?
During the Dark Ages, cats were killed as demonic beings (unfathomable!). The most possible origin of the nine lives saying could be Beware the Cat, which is the earliest original piece of long prose literature in English, published in 1533.
Beware the Cat : The First English Novel
The author William Baldwin wrote, “it is permitted for a witch to take her cat’s body nine times.” (source: Cat Facts) If you want to read about the number nine, check out the Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy, and Spaceflight, which also gives Beware the Cat credit for the 9 lives myth.
As a bonus, here’s a related term which is a bit more nasty, but hey, it’s Halloween time!
Cat O’ Nine Tails:
In olden days, people were flogged by a nasty device made up of three separate knottings of three stands attached to the whip’s handle. While the strands may have been made from the hide of cats, the multiple of 9 had already been associated with cats; presumably if a person being flogged survived, they were as lucky as a cat with 9 lives. Yeeeeowch! (source: Cat-ch phrases)
Wow, all that research made me want to take a nap with Pinky, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do!
- Bambi
