"So long as a cat was in his house the Egyptian felt safe from inimical
supernatural influences, but if there was no cat in the house at night,
then any undesirable from the occult world might visit him. Indeed, in
such high esteem did the Egyptians hold the cat, that they voluntarily
incurred the gravest risks when its life was in peril. No one of them
appreciated the cat and set a higher value on its mystic properties than
the Sultan El-Daher-Beybas, who reigned in A.D. 1260, and has been
compared with William of Tripoli for his courage, and with Nero for his
cruelty. El-Daher-Beybas kept his palace swarming with cats, and--if we
may give credence to tradition--was seldom to be seen unaccompanied by
one of these animals. When he died, he left the proceeds from the
product of a garden to support his feline friends--an example that found
many subsequent imitators. Indeed, until comparatively recently in
Cairo, cats were regularly fed, between noon and sunset, in the outer
court of the Mehkemeh.

"In Geneva, Rome and Constantinople, though cats were generally deemed
to have souls and to possess psychic properties, they were thought to
derive them from evil sources, and so strong was the prejudice against
these unfortunate animals on this account, that all through the Middle
Ages we find them suffering such barbaric torture as only the perverted
minds of a fanatical, priest-ridden people could devise (which
treatment, no doubt, partly, at all events, accounts for the many
palaces, houses, etc., in those particular countries, stated to have
been haunted by the spirits of cats).

"The devil was popularly supposed to appear in the shape of a black Tom
in preference to assuming any other guise, and the bare fact of an old
woman being seen, once or twice, with a black cat by her side was quite