Happy National Black Cat Appreciation Day!
A few years after the death of his 33-year-old sister, June, Wayne Morris wanted to do something in her honor. June adored her black cat, Sinbad, who died at 20 years old, just two months after she passed.
So the Virginia man teamed up with Rikki’s Refuge, a sanctuary where he volunteered, and created National Black Cat Appreciation Day in 2011. Morris chose the day of June’s passing, August 17, in her memory, and that first year marked it by holding a fundraiser for Rikki’s Refuge.
Morris was delighted by black cats as well. He often posted about Norman and Batman, his own melanistic miniature panthers, advocated for the adoption of black felines, and painted whimsical scenes of cats, which were auctioned to raise money for Rikki’s.
(Above, clockwise from top left: Batman, Wayne Morris, Norman, Batman again, and one of Morris’s paintings.)
Wayne Morris died in 2022, but the day he founded has continued to grow in popularity. In the 14 years since its inaugural celebration, National Black Cat Appreciation Day has spread via fundraisers for shelters across the country, as well as sites within the online catosphere, like this one.
Morris was motivated beyond honoring his sister and raising money for his favorite rescue. Black cats — also affectionately known as voids — have suffered unfortunate reputational damage over the centuries.
Melanistic felines are actually considered good luck in Japan, China and most of Asia, where they can be found in temples and their likenesses are used as maneki neko, the ubiquitous “lucky cats” in homes and businesses. (Black maneki neko are said to ward off evil spirits, diseases and people with bad intentions, while the golden cat statues are associated with wealth and the white neko are thought to bring good health.)
But in much of the western world they’re associated with bad luck, “evil” forces in folklore, and they’ve been invoked in outbursts of moral panic over things like witchcraft.
A black cat — or a statue of one — was said to be involved in Satanic rituals in Spain by Konrad van Marburg, an inquisitor known for his brutal zealotry. While the effect of that accusation has been exaggerated for years in internet discussions and posts (Pope Gregory IX’s papal bull dealt with a small area of Germany and did not declare that black cats were Satanic), it naturally comes up in superstitions about the animals.
A 2020 study of 8,000 adoptions found black cats were less likely to be adopted and more likely to be euthanized. That study and others found there was “scant evidence” for the dramatic margins suggested by anecdotal accounts circulating online and in some publications, but confirmed the problem is real. Research also suggests that negative perceptions of black cats isn’t correlated to religious preferences, but is tied to general belief in the supernatural.
Interestingly, additional research has hinted at a decidedly more modern and petty reason people may hesitate to adopt black cats: they think voids are more difficult to photograph, which is an issue for people who want to show their pets off online. (We’ve written about that particular hang-up before, and noted it’s possible to take beautiful photographs of voids by being mindful of factors like lighting and contrast between fur color and the background.)
Regardless, the combined effect of the superstitions and negative associations has harmed black-coated felines, and National Black Cat Appreciation Day is also an attempt to push back and show people that black cats are just, well, cats.
Pain In The Bud 