Cat family is 300 years old !
It is interesting to note that less than 300 years after her arrival the cat also had fallen from grace in Japan. From being the pampered pet of the rich, she had become an evil demon in legend and folklore.
The survival of the cat seems to have been due to her own resourcefulness and to the courage of her few remaining human friends. For it was literally worth a person’s life to own a cat when the murderous frenzy was at its height. Old ladies in particular needed only to keep a cat to convict themselves of witchcraft.
Millers and sailors stayed loyal to their small helpers, to some degree; some tough old dames managed to protect their hearthside companions; and writers and statesmen began to be numbered among the folks who traditionally and fundamentally liked cats. Some of these, fortunately, were quite influential. The great political cardinals, Wolsey of England and Richelieu of France, both had a succession of pet cats and were neither bewitched nor bedeviled.
It is impossible to estimate how much this kind of support helped, but by the eighteenth century the tide had begun to turn once more in favor of the cat.
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