Title: Black cat crossing your path
General Information about Item:
- American Superstition
- Language: English
- Origin: Europe
- Informant: Bennett Mccaskill
- Date Collected 11/2/18
Informant Data: Bennett is a Sophomore baseball player at Dartmouth college studying Psychology. He was born in Del Mar, San Diego. He grew up having pets, and loves to interact with animals.
Contextual Data:
Social: Bennett has been around cats his whole life. He currently has two pet cats named Shiva and Mona. He also has occasional interactions with Poncho, the neighborhood cat that loves to hang out in Bennett’s backyard.
Cultural: Bennett’s mother shared this superstition with Bennett. Bennett and his family are very comfortable around cats, but his mom was still thrown off at the sight of a black cat crossing through their yard. At first it was hard for Bennett to understand why Poncho was welcome in their yard but this other cat was not.
Subgenre: bad luck superstitions
Item: If a black cat crosses your path, you will have bad luck.
Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):
Transcript of Associated File:
Max: Alright Bennett, tell me about your superstition of black cats.
Bennett: This is something that my mom told me cause we have a neighborhood cat that likes to hang out in our yard a lot, and it’s not black but one day there was a black cat that like ran across our yard and my mom just made me aware of the superstition that it’s very unlucky to see black cats or have them cross your path.
Informant’s Comments: Bennett said that when he first learned of this superstition, he was very surprised to see his moms reaction to seeing the black cat, but after a while it felt normal for him to avoid black cats since that superstition was instilled in him.
Collector’s Comments:
I was surprised that this superstition was passed down in a family like Bennett’s that loves cats so much. I was expecting some of the context to include a bad experience that they had with cats, but this was not the case.
Collector’s Name: Max Hunter
Tags/Keywords:
Bad luck superstitions, American, cats