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I have been a cat person for as long as I can remember. My childhood cat was a black male cat who died from eating something poisonous. When he was alive, he would jump from the roof and land on his feet every time. That made me to think about one of the oldest adages regarding cats.
Do you actually believe that cats have nine lives? Well I actually did believe that till I asked my mother a while back and she said, "no silly" and I was like "yeah I thought so". In as much as I believed
So where exactly did this phrase originate from? I decided to research it for myself.
The adage has its roots all the way back to Ancient Egypt. Back then cats were revered as gods and were closely connected to the goddess Bastet, the protector of women. Ra, the sun god, was also believed to have taken on the form of a cat and was considered to be associated with nine different gods. Many ancient cultures saw the number nine as a final number that symbolized wholeness.
The statement "a cat has nine lives," can be broken down into three parts and this concept is predominant in England. The first three lives are those in which the cat is involved in playful antics, the second three are those in which the cat wanders about in curiosity and the third and final three are those in which the cat is doing nothing much but simply hanging out. This saying, which describes cats as having three periods of life, was made popular by Shakespeare in his play "Romeo and Juliet," when Mercutio poked fun at Romeo, saying he had already used one of his nine lives.
Not every part of the world holds this idea or belief though. In Spain, they say the cats have seven lives, and in Arabic speaking cultures, they say it's six lives. But for the most part it's based off of the cat's death defying abilities.
But the fact is they have one life. If they had nine, my cat who was poisoned would have resurrected.
