Lore
Cats in myth, history and superstition — temple cats and ships' cats, black-cat panics, and where the stories we still repeat actually came from.
Lore
Simon, Able Seacat
One cat has ever received the Dickin Medal. He earned it over 101 days on a shelled and stranded frigate, and he is the naval cat story that actually holds up.
Lore
A Hundred and Eighty Thousand Cat Mummies, Sold as Fertiliser
Egypt revered cats. Egypt also bred and killed them at industrial scale to sell to pilgrims. Both things are true, and the second is the one that gets left out.
Lore
Nine Lives, or Seven?
Depending on where you grew up, a cat has nine lives or seven. Both are old, both are confident, and nobody actually knows where either came from.
Lore
The Cat That Isn’t Waving
The maneki-neko is one of the most recognised objects on earth, and most people outside Japan misread the gesture, the origin and the country.
Lore
The Bull, the Black Cat, and the Plague That Wasn’t Their Fault
A medieval pope really did write about a black cat. The story that this caused the Black Death is one of the most repeated pieces of nonsense on the internet.