Vampires and werewolves, even werecats, oh my…

Vampires and werewolves, even werecats, oh my…

As an aside of sorts, it seems surprising that werecats do not figure large in these legends and lore.  Large cats can attack and kill humans, certainly do kill large prey.  And cats are susceptible to infection by rabies.  Yet references, at least in European literature, to ravenous werecats are much less common compared with those regarding werewolves.  There are several factors that can account for this.  Attacks by cats, large and small, tend to be clean, often nearly bloodless, not in line with a lust for blood.  Killing, especially by large cats, is by asphyxiation, crushing the windpipe or by covering and closing off the prey’s snout.  House cats sever the spinal cord and/or windpipe, also resulting in death without bloodletting. In addition, felines tend to drag away and hide their kills, leaving no horrific trace for friends and relatives to find as in the case of wolf kills.  Moreover, the bite of a cat very likely ends in the victim’s death, not in injuries that could turn a survivor.  Cats inflict serious wounds through their claws, but because the transfer of rabies requires the introduction of virus-laden saliva into flesh and blood (as turning is said to require infection of the blood), survivors suffering scratches alone aren't going to acquire rabies; aren't going to be turned.  As frightening, as deadly, as wild cats can be, they don’t turn victims.  Not surprisingly then, werecats don’t figure large in our tales of blood-lust and rage in large part because they don’t produce rabid victims.

In addition, the paucity of ravenous werecats in European mythology is due to the fact that large cats, e.g. cave lions, were exterminated in Europe by 1000 AD, long before the printing press could make it easy to keep any such oral traditions alive.  Extant, much smaller, wild cats and their housecat relatives are more often depicted as witches eerily watching, but not attacking, humans. 

Ironically, in Westernized countries where pet dogs are routinely immunized against rabies, pet housecats have become the more common source of rabies exposure to humans, as they bite defensively when perturbed.