Mythical Cats

VHS cover

Mythical Cats is the fourth episode of Creatures Fantastic, which aired in 1997 on the Discovery Channel and Arts Channel. The topic of this episode is the many ways that cats appear in mythology, combining both domestic cats and big cats – this includes mythological cat monsters and superstitions about the living animals.

## Episode

Click here for the full transcript for Mythical Cats.

### Introduction

*"Its mysterious character is riddled with contradictions. Independent but affectionate; godlike but demonic; beautiful yet brutal – the cat has power and majesty and is a natural born killer. How did man ever come to worship cats? Why were they later persecuted as the devil? And what of the legendary feline monsters and their supernatural powers? Why do we find cats so mysterious? Indeed, why do we have any feeling for cats at all?"*

### Episode outline

The episode opens in Egypt in the year 2,000 BC, when the Egyptians worshipped the goddesses Sekhmet and Bastet who were depicted as lionesses. Cats were worshipped because it was believed their eyes stored the sun’s rays.

*The storyteller tells his first story, of how Sekhmet would join her father Ra on his boat each evening and would slay the serpent Apep when he rose from the waters of the heavenly Nile, so allowing the sun to rise again.*

Pharaohs brought offerings for the cat goddesses. The admiration for cats grew from their practical value as the killers of vermin that could have destroyed Egypt’s economy. From wild cats, a mutually beneficial relationship soon formed and the domestic cat came into being. By the end of the Old Kingdom, Bastet had begun to be depicted as a domestic cat. She became a national deity and was the goddess of prosperity and happy family life. Cats were believed to enhance female fertility and were often depicted sitting under a woman’s chair. Cats were mummified, families would shave off an eyebrow if a pet cat died and killing a cat was punishable by death. While small cats became the focus of a religious cult, big cats symbolised the pharaoh’s might and majesty. The lion was top predator in the Nile Delta and challenged man’s domination of the land. The lion and the human were combined to become the sphinx, the most famous of which is found at Giza. By around 2160 BC, the sphinx was abandoned and sand piled up around it so only its head was exposed. It remained this way until the arrival of the warrior prince Thutmose.

*The storyteller’s second story talks about how Thutmose had a dream in which the sphinx spoke to him, promising a long and fruitful reign if he was freed from the desert. On waking, the prince set off to the town of Memphis to rally an army of men to dig out the sphinx from under the sand.*

Although Thutmose became pharaoh and fulfilled the sphinx’s prophecy, his reign was short – he was dead in just eight years. The word sphinx is actually thought to be Greek and means strangler. The Greek sphinx was a very different creature, part lion and part woman. In ancient Greece, women were associated with unpredictability and savagery, so became the perfect monster when combined with a lion.

*The storyteller’s third story is the story of Oedipus. He sets out to avoid a prophecy which states he would kill his birth father and marry his mother; he is drawn into a violent argument with an old man on the road. In the heat of the moment, he slays the man – unknowing to Oedipus this was his birth father, King Laius. On the outskirts of the city of Thebes, Oedipus encounters the sphinx holding the city captive. She demands an answer to her riddle and kills anyone who can’t answer it – the riddle is ‘What creature alone’, she demanded ‘changes the number of its feet. In the morning it has four, at midday two, in the evening three feet and is weakest when it has most.’ When Oedipus correctly gives the answer – man – the furious sphinx hurls herself into the ocean. As a reward, Oedipus is crowned king and given the hand of the widowed queen Jocasta. They marry and have children. Plagues and pestilence beset Thebes. Eventually, the blind seer Tiresias confronts Oedipus with the terrible truth, that he murdered his father and married his mother. Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus blinds himself before leaving Thebes a broken man.*

The sphinx’s inscrutability may owe to the impenetrable gaze of the lion. In the story, Oedipus thinks he has answered the riddle but misses that the third stage of the riddle, a man walking with a stick, is Oedipus himself – blinded and in exile. The griffin also had lion parts, combining the king of the land with the falcon, the king of the sky. The Greek historian Herodotus described them as invincible. They were said to guard treasure and be cruel beyond all imagination.

*The storyteller’s fourth story is about two men panning for gold in the Hyperborean Mountains who encounter a pony with its panniers laden with glittering rocks. Sneaking to the entrance of a nearby cave, one of the men sees two miners trying to remove as many precious metals as possible from inside the cave. A shadow cuts off the light – it is two angry griffins circling overhead. The two miners rushed from the cave, but the griffins swoop down on them and kill them.*

The griffin was immortal, because it was a spiritual creature not of this world. The imperishable gold they guarded represented immortality – man wants to possess the gold, or eternal life, but will not succeed. In this way, the griffin also represents man’s fate. The cult of the super-predator has existed since the dawn of civilisation, with the local top predator associated with wisdom, power and fertility. Powerful individuals tried to use the power of these animals to stamp their authority. The tiger was to Asians what the lion was to Egyptians and Greeks, the jaguar to Central Americans and the leopard to Sub-Saharan Africans. In Southeast Asia, stories of men transforming into tigers is common while in Sumatra there are stories of whole weretiger families. Tribespeople in Southeast Asia comfort themselves with the belief that anyone killed by a tiger will have their soul live on in the animal. The tiger was revered wherever it lived, as a protector of crops, guardian against evil and intermediary between heaven and earth. The Persians even named their main river the Tigris after it. All the major Asian religions – Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism – adopted the tiger as an ally to their god on Earth. A Malaysian story tells of a tiger bringing a new way of life to humanity.

*The storyteller’s fifth story tells that in the beginning, humanity had no rules. The rules of social order were kept by a part-tiger, part-man spirit called Moyang Melur, who lived on the moon. Watching the disorder below, he leaned out too far and fell to Earth. He met a hunter, Moyang Kepir, and swore he would kill every human unless he was returned to the moon at once. Moyang Kepir threw a rope up to the moon and both he and the tiger climbed up. As Moyang Melur prepared to kill the man, Moyang Kepir grabbed the bag of rules and escaped back down the rope to Earth.*

To steal from the tiger is to gain its power. In the Chinese calendar, people born in the Year of the Tiger have strength, courage and a love of freedom. In Christian countries, the cat had a more difficult time. As Christianity spread, things held dear in pagan times were regarded as evil. The cat became a target for demonisation, with its reflective eyes said to house the fires of Hell. The distrust of cats was portrayed in art – some versions of the Last Supper depict a cat sitting by Judas Iscariot’s chair. The relationship between women and cats became regarded as evil. Witches were said to turn into cats and some cats were tried in court and later hanged or burned as witches. Metamorphosis between cats and women has been a recurring theme through the ages, as one anonymous French story tells.

*The storyteller’s final story is about a Monsieur Pichard in Paris, who says goodbye to his fiancé Nanon. As he sits at a bench, a white cat appears next to him. After the close of every evening, Pichard meets this wayward cat. Eventually, Pichard marries Nanon and he forgets these meetings. One night, he woke to discover he was alone in bed and was awoken several hours later by Nanon returning to bed – they have a terrible row. The next night Nanon disappears again but this time the white cat comes to the bed. One morning, Pichard sees a white paw creep around the bedroom door and strikes it. A woman’s scream rings out through the house. For days, Nanon does not appear and when she does, she seems ashamed and goes straight to bed. From where Pichard is standing, he cannot see her bandaged hand or her cat’s eyes.*

By the time of this story, the cat was no longer a witch’s sidekick but instead served as a mirror for man’s sceptical view of women. Throughout history the cat has been a god, a devil, a fertility icon and a symbol of royalty. This fascination continues today, with cats representing everything from clothes to sports cars. We still see the lion as the protector of our interests, with statues of it flanking monuments and tombs. The griffin has come full circle and now represents banks, in a way guarding our own worldly wealth. Although we no longer have use for the cat myths, these animals still hold onto their intrigue. Our fascination remains as strong as ever for a creature not quite of this world.

## Animal species filmed for the programme

### Studio footage

* Domestic cat, *Felis catus*
* Tiger, *Panthera tigris*
* Cheetah, *Acinonyx jubatus*
* Lion, *Panthera leo*
* Domestic horse, *Equus ferus caballus*
* Leopard, *Panthera pardus*

### Stock footage

* Domestic cat, *Felis catus*
* Serval, *Leptailurus serval*
* Tiger, *Panthera tigris*
* Lion, *Panthera leo*
* Leopard cat, *Prionailurus bengalensis*
* Ocelot, *Leopardus pardalis*
* Jaguar, *Panthera onca*
* European wildcat, *Felis silvestris*
* Black rat, *Rattus rattus*
* House mouse, *Mus musculus*
* Blue wildebeest, *Connochaetes taurinus*
* African buffalo, *Syncerus caffer*
* Saker falcon, *Falco cherrug*
* Caracal, *Caracal caracal*
* Cheetah, *Acinonyx jubatus*
* Leopard, *Panthera pardus*
* Domestic dog, *Canis familiaris*

## Stock footage sources

Tiger on the Tiles (1988) – Domestic cat at night

The Velvet Claw: The Carnassial Connection (1992) - Running cheetah

While the exact source of the stock footage is not known, this episode shares footage with the opening title sequence from **Big Cat Diary** that first aired in 1996 (including the male lion walking through heat haze, a close-up of a lioness's face with the tail of a cub sweeping over it, the lioness roaring in silhouette and the lion shaking water from its mane). There is also one piece of shared footage between this episode and the opening titles of **Land of the Tiger** from 1997 (the tiger slowly walking from right-to-left through shallow water). Otherwise, the footage has some differences - none of the other clips are identical and the Creatures Fantastic footage is in colour rather than black-and-white.

## Credits

* Director - Brian Cummins
* Narrator - Zoë Wanamaker
* Storyteller - John Shrapnel
* With thanks to:
	+ Bristol City Council
	+ Midland Bank
	+ Pierre Smirnoff Co.
	+ Respect for Animals
	+ Clip from '*Mystery of the Sphinx*' provided through the courtesy of Vidmark Entertainment Inc.
	+ '*Des Caresses*' by Fernand Khnopff produced by permission of The Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels
* Series Adviser - Marina Walker
* Production Designer - Graeme Thomson
* Make-up Designer - Diana Butler
* Production Buyer - Geoff Royall
* Lighting Cameraman - Ian Salvage
* Lighting Gaffer - Chris Thompson
* Dubbing - The Sound Store
* Picture Editor - Lucy D'Auvergne
* Music - The Insects
* Graphics - 4:2:2 Videographics
* First Assistant Director - Nick Gorman
* Runner - Richard Simpkins
* Researcher - Anna Mike
* Production Co-ordinator - Sue Storey
* Production Manager - Anne Bamber
* Unit Manager - Teresa Watts
* BBC Wildvision Executive Producer - David Wallace
* Discovery Channel Executive Producer - Tomi Landis
* Dorling Kindersley Vision Executive Producer - Simon Jollands
* Series Producer - Michael Waterhouse

## Home media releases

As with all Creatures Fantastic episodes, Mythical Cats has only been released on VHS. The cover of the box shows a faded picture of a tiger's coat, with the main picture being a photograph of the Sphinx in Giza, Egypt. Also on the cover is an ancient Egyptian statue of Bastet and a statue of a roaring tiger.

The picture on the spine and back cover is a screenshot of Bastet and Sekhmet seated side-by-side.

The blurb on the back cover of the VHS reads:

Cats have intrigued us for thousands of years: beautiful but brutal, affectionate yet natural born killers. The Egyptians worshipped the cat. The Pharaohs adopted the lion as the symbol of their power and majesty, building the huge Sphinx at Giza. **Mythical Cats** explores our complex relationship with these fascinating creatures, from the terrifying Griffin to beguiling eastern tales of tigers on the moon.

Back cover of Mythical Cats VHS

**Narrators** Zoë Wanamaker (primary narrator) • John Shrapnel (storyteller narrator)
**Episodes**: Creatures of the Night • Dragons • Creatures of the Deep • **Mythical Cats** • The Apocalypse • Werewolves • The Underworld • Man Beasts • Spirits of the Forest • Mythical Horses • Birds and Things with Wings • Tricky Tricksters • Aliens