One of these days I will see “Nine Lives: Cats in Istanbul,” and cease to exist because I will melt into a pile of goo. Watching the trailer, I thought about cats and Islam. Turns out, it’s kind of a thing:
According to legend, Abu Hurairah’s cat saved Muhammad from a snake. In gratitude, Muhammad stroked the cat’s back and forehead, thus blessing all cats with the righting reflex. The stripes some cats have on their foreheads are believed to mark the touch of Muhammad’s fingers.
The “stripes” refer to the nearly ubiquitous “m” that many cats have on their foreheads. That story fucking rules. Other articles on the first page of a Google search for “cats and Islam” include: “The Sunnah and Blessings in Healing effects of Cats,” and “Deen islam -Secrets and Blessings of cats.”
Since Islam is the sworn enemy of the apocalypse yearning madmen currently running America, I thought it prudent to examine their chosen religion’s relationship to cats. If one googles “Christianity and Cats” not only is there not a Wikipedia page, but literally the first listing is titled “Ten reasons it’s okay for Christians to hate cats.” The other website titles are similarly shitty (another: “Are Cats For True Christians?”). Fucking weak. But then, what should I have expected from a religion whose incarnated deity forced a bunch of pigs to commit mass suicide?
In the interest of providing all sides to the story, I thought I’d see what good ol’ science has to say in terms of the “m.” Perhaps my googling skills are lagging, but I couldn’t find anything pertaining directly to it. As far as cat coat patterns:
The conclusion, then, is that the patterns of cat coats reflect, in large degree, selection for camouflage in their natural habitats. This camouflage almost certainly evolved to hide them from prey, and, in smaller cats, predators as well.
But no word on the “m.” The deafening silence forces me to conclude that, indeed, Muhammad gave cats their “m.”
Carrie, Hester, and their “m’s”
Patches doesn’t have an “m” but it wouldn’t be fair to not have a picture of her. Note that science also doesn’t have an explanation for mer-cats
It’s a little weird that Mo decided to go with a Roman letter to mark cats though.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
He just wanted the Roman-alphabet-using world to see constant reminders of his own initial.
It’s a W, not an M. My cat used to lie on his back a lot.
The W stands for WTF, patron saint of most cat servants.
Okay, I even checked the Wikipfft article, and still struck out: what’s a “righting reflex”?
“The righting reflex, also known as the Labyrinthine righting reflex, is a reflex that corrects the orientation of the body when it is taken out of its normal upright position.”
Cats hunt at dawn and dusk, and in dappled shade their tabby coats make them nearly invisible. It is why tabby evolved as wild type.
Pierce R. Butler
Cats always land on their feet.
Best. Post. Ever.
Ah, right! (see what I just did?) Thanks to IHFJ & chigau for helping me get my feet on the ground!
Hah, I see your muslim cats and I raise you a Bastet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastet
Egyptian goddess of protection, joy, music and dance. Also, the “M” on cats’ foreheads is obviously for “meow”, the Egyptian word for “cat”. It’s science, bruh.
Hah, I stand corrected
I used to have a ginger tabby cat (Chico, R.I.P.). Despite being bright orange and white, he would become almost invisible in tall green grass.
His successor, Spook, is almost solid black; but in sufficiently bright natural daylight, you can actually see two shades of black — sort of like a very, very dark brown and a very, very dark blue — in a classic tabby pattern. This is not apparent under electric lighting, probably due to the spiky spectrum of the phosphors in cheap compact fluorescents …..