Witches and Cats in Puss in Boots and Other Cat Tales From Around the World

It was rather inevitable that witches would need to appear in a collection of cat tales, so there are several in Puss in Boots and Other Cat Tales From Around the World. Witches and devils are almost always evil and need to be destroyed in these stories, so they are not the happiest of tales, but definitely an interesting subgenre of folklore.

From my introduction:

It would be negligent to not include tales of cats as witches’ animal manifestations, familiars or companions since that is one of the most prevalent associations for cats in folklore. While I collected many short anecdotes featuring cats and witches—or devils which are interchangeable with witches in many of these stories—finding full stories to share was challenging. I have enough material and notes for a short book devoted to the topic, but it’s not one that is as interesting to me and has been addressed in greater depth elsewhere. However, I wanted some representative tales of witches and cats to be included here and so chose some of the most interesting and fully developed stories from my research.

One of my favorite stories in the entire anthology appears in this section. It is “The Black Cat,” from North Carolina in the United States. It made me laugh outloud the first time I read it and I knew it would have a place somewhere in this collection. It’s short and not an easy read since it is written in a Southern USA dialect, but be sure not to miss it.

Many of the tales offered as witch stories do not have an ATU type but fall into a different cataloging system as Migratory Legend 3055: The Witch That Was Hurt.[1] In this legend type, a witch is injured while in the shape of an animal, often a cat or hare. Her secret identity is revealed when the corresponding injury is seen on her after she has resumed her human form. She is usually punished or even executed for her witchy activities. The injury, thankfully, is usually a serious one, not a simple scratch, but more on the level of a missing appendage.

[1] Migratory legends are another tale classification system developed by Reidar Thoralf Christiansen in The Migratory Legends: A Proposed List of Types with a Systematic Catalogue of the Norwegian Variants (1958).

The Witch tales in the collection are:

The Cats of San Lorenzo from Italy
San Miniato fra le Torre from Italy
How Diana Made the Stars and the Rain from Italy
Diana as Giving Beauty and Restoring Strength from Italy
The Cat-Hags of Gries from Tyrol (Italy & Austria)
The Green Lady: Norfolk from England
The Weaver’s Wife and the Witch from England
The Cat Witches from Wales
The Two Cat Witches from Wales
Macgillichallum of Razay from Scotland
The Witch of Laggan from Scotland
The Severed Hand from Norway
A Witch Burnt from Netherlands
The Witch’s Cat from Belgium
The Devil’s Cat from Germany
The Severed Hand from Germany
The Witch from Russia
The Lady Who Became a Cat from India
The Vampire Cat of Nabeshima from Japan
A Plantation Witch from United States
The Crow and Cat of Hopkinshill from United States
The Black Cat from United States
The Cat Who Wanted Shoes from United States
The Woman-Cat from United States