Next to the pointy hat and the broomstick, the cat, particularly the black cat, may be the most familiar attribute of any witch. “Familiar” is, in fact, what the witch’s cat is said to be, although not in the everyday sense of the word. So the question is, why do witches carry black cats on their broomsticks? The answer is complex, involving culture, capitalism and credulity.

While we use the word “familiar” for things which are known and not strange to us, the witch’s familiar is, by contrast, indeed strange and uncanny, a beast associated with magic, spirits, and unseen things. In magical parlance a familiar is a partner in the witch’s magical work and a helper in casting her spells.

The idea of a witch having a familiar is relatively recent in European history. By contrast, many other cultures consider it normal for a shaman, medicine person or sorcerer to employ spirits in their work. From Australia to Siberia, aboriginal cultures have a long tradition of spirit-animals as helpers in magical or shamanic practice. Sometimes these spirit animals were free to come and go in their own forms, but some magicians and sorcerers bound their helping spirits in objects such as rings or necklaces. King Solomon was reputed to be adept at binding spirits in bottles and jewels, and is said to have had such a ring which allowed him to understand the speech of animals.

In Europe, while witches were assumed to be able to take animal form, usually as cats or hares, animal helpers in magic didn’t become accepted as common practice until the 1500s. In fact, the most famous witch-hunting manual, the Malleus Malificarum (“The Hammer of Witches”), written in 1486, doesn’t even mention familiar spirits, animal-shaped or otherwise. The two German monks who wrote this manual were appointed “inquisitors of heretical depravity” by the pope of the day, Innocent VIII, while the witch-hunting craze was in full swing in Europe. If familiars or spirit animals had been part of the common belief about witchcraft, they’d have known it. The only mention they make of animals and magic is one reference to a witch taking the shape of a cat to harass a neighbour.

When the animal familiar does appear in the literature, it seems to be almost exclusively a feature of English and Scottish witchcraft. It’s not even clear that the familiar is an actual animal; whenever they do appear, they are described as spirits in animal form. They looked like small, common animals, such as cats, dogs, ferrets, hedgehogs, hares or toads. Depending on the source, familiars might subsist on blood sucked from the witch’s body, or they might be kept in a wool-lined basket and fed milk, bread or meat. Of these animals, the cat is most noticeably nocturnal. At a time when the night was considered by many people to be the domain of ghosts and demons, an animal that was at home in the dark was suspect.

These spirits often had quite undemonic names, such as Fancy, Tibbs, Ball or Rutterkin. Sometimes they had human names. Jane Bussey of Kent was accused at her trial in 1583 of keeping a familiar spirit in the shape of a grey cat named Russell, and Bessie Dunlop, 40 years later, had one named Tom Reid. These often silly and trivial names were supposed to deceive the witch into believing that she was not dealing with Satan. The funny names and the wool-lined basket certainly make these little animals seem more like pets than like eldritch spirits.

While some accused witches confessed to receiving a familiar from the devil, others said they had inherited a familiar from an older witch, often a deceased family member. (As anyone named by an accused witch might face similar accusations, a deceased relative was a safe name to give.) Some familiars even turned up by themselves, offering a magical way out of troubles such as poverty and starvation. One woman said she was so bothered by two “familiar spirits” who turned up spontaneously that she prayed for God to take them away.

In the 21st century it is relatively safe, possibly even trendy, to be a witch. Modern practitioners of witchcraft may get funny looks, religious harangues, possibly bricks through windows or other unwelcome attention, but at least legal prosecution and execution is no longer on the table. But during the late Middle Ages and even into the Renaissance, witchcraft was a serious accusation, and the immediate assumption was guilt unless the accused could prove her – sometimes his – innocence. So why, with so much at stake, would anyone say that her cat was anything but a companion and mouser? In most cases, it seems, it was under duress.

Most descriptions of familiars are recorded in the accounts of witch trials. The notorious Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, active from 1644-1647, was responsible for more people being executed for witchcraft in those three years than had been executed for it in the previous century. Trickery and torture of various sorts were common in the effort to prove the guilt of an accused witch. Witches were supposed to have a “devil’s mark” which was insensitive to pain, and part of a witchfinder’s arsenal was a pin which retracted into its handle rather than pricking, thus “proving” the accused a witch. Hopkins favoured sleep deprivation as his primary torture. An accused woman, frightened, hungry and sleep-deprived, might well hallucinate the appearance of spirits in animal form, or tell her captors whatever would allow her to lie down and sleep. One suspected witch, after four days without sleep, called out for her familiars and told them what shapes to take.

“Holt, who came in like a white kitling (kitten), Farmara … like a fat spaniel without any legs at all. Vinegar Tom, like a long-legged greyhound with a head like an Ox, Sack and Sugar like a black rabbit and Newes like a polecat.”

In addition the woman said she had command of several imps, named Elemanzer, Pyewacket, Peckin the Crown and Grizel Greedigut. While the names and appearances are recorded in the woman’s words, there is no record of whether Hopkins or any of his cronies actually saw the animals or imps in question.

Witchfinding, incidentally, was a paid profession, compensation often depending on the number of witches found. It’s worth noting that Hopkins was paid about a thousand pounds (about $250,000 today) over three years for his witch-finding accomplishments, so it paid him to be credulous. It’s doubtful he would have found so many guilty of witchcraft if he had been witchfinding in his spare time. But even without the incentive of pay, it seems that people were prepared to believe in demonic animals.

During the English Civil War, which lasted from 1642 to 1645, the Cavalier general Prince Rupert made a habit of taking his dog, a black standard poodle named Boy, into battle with him. Boy was greatly feared by the Roundheads, who believed he had magical powers, which probably says a lot more about Rupert’s skills as a general than about the dog. Nonetheless, when the Cavaliers were defeated the Roundheads shot Boy; according to some accounts they used a silver bullet, the only metal that would reliably kill an evil spirit.

The Puritans who went to the New World took their beliefs and fears with them. In 1648 the state of Massachusetts passed a law defining a witch as someone who had, or consulted with, a familiar spirit. The law was repealed in 1682, but that didn’t help the men and women of Salem who were accused of witchcraft ten years later. The evidence that doomed them was given by the teenaged girls who claimed that they were being magically tormented by various men and women, and often included allegations of familiar spirits. Ann Putnam, a thirteen-year-old instrumental in getting several people hanged for witchcraft, said to Martha Corey, “There is a yellow bird sucking between your fore finger and middle finger. I see it.” Again, there is no evidence that anyone but the accuser actually saw the bird.

So far the cats described as familiars have been the grey cats Russell and Tom Reid, and the white kitten Holt. In Macbeth, Shakespeare’s witches say: “Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed” – in other words, a brindle, or tortoiseshell cat. The tortoiseshell cat, often black with flecks of white and yellow, is “fire-touched”, and many torties also have a quite striking colour division down the face, which can give an odd, even spooky, appearance. Where is the black cat in all this?

Contrary to continental European and North American belief, in England and Scotland the black cat is considered lucky, and it is the white cat who bears the reputation for ill luck. King Charles I had a black cat which he called his luck, and when the cat died, he said, “My luck is gone.” It was, too, for shortly afterwards he was deposed and later beheaded.

It’s possible that part of the prejudice against black cats was the Roundheads’ hatred of the Royalists and all about them. That prejudice probably travelled to the New World, accounting for the North American idea of black cats as ill-luck omens. After the Restoration, however, it seems the prejudice against black cats was quickly forgotten in England. Today they feature as good luck symbols right along with four-leaved clovers and horseshoes. Folk healing spells often use the hair of a black cat to cure illness, and brushing the tail of a black cat over a stye will heal the afflicted eye. In many places it’s considered lucky to own a black cat, and sailors, in particular, count a black cat as good luck on a ship.

So why does a witch carry a black cat on her broomstick? The idea of the cat as a familiar spirit arose partly because of the capitalism that made Mathew Hopkins and other witchfinders wealthy at the expense of innocent people. It’s also partly because of the credulity of judges, in the old world and the new, that gave legal weight to the words of deluded children and terrified, hallucinating women. Perhaps it would have been a white cat, or a tortoiseshell one, if not for the Puritans’s view of the black cats as evil.

Or maybe none of those reasons have anything to do with it. Maybe a witch carries a black cat on her broomstick because an elephant just weighs too much.

Elizabeth Creith writes about the lighter side of rural living