50 Black Cat Quotes For Breaking Superstitions

Feel the magic in the air and check out our black cat quotes. 

Black cats get a bad reputation from people who believe they are a sign of bad luck. 

Are black cats bad luck? 

Black cats are not a sign of bad luck; this is an old superstition. 

Check out these interesting black cat facts:

• Most black cats are male. 
• Most black cats have golden eyes. 
• There are twenty-two different breeds of black cats. 

Why do some people think black cats are bad luck?

The answer goes back to the thirteenth century. 

On June 13, 1233, Pope Gregory IX wrote an official Catholic Church document called the Vox in Rama. 

In his document, he declared all black cats to be a literal incarnation of Satan. 

From there, the Catholic Church sanctioned heretic and witch hunts, often targeting people who had black cats as pets. 

This belief spread across Europe and eventually made its way to America as European settlers brought cultural superstitions. 

From there, black cats received an unfair and unearned bad reputation as evil. 

In American culture, black cats get associated with Halloween and supernatural energies. 

Black cats are good luck for some

Not all cultures look at black cats as bad luck. 

Ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Japanese cultures consider black cats good luck. 

Egyptians considered cats divine, while the Greeks linked cats with the goddess Hecate.

In Japanese culture, a black cat walking your path is good luck. 

For more awesome feline noir content, check out our black cat quotes below. 

Short black cat quotes

Here are some short and sweet quotes about black cats. 

1. “There are no ordinary cats.” — Colette

2. “Every girl needs a little black cat.” — Gwen Cooper

3. “I believe cats to be spirits come to earth.” — Jules Verne 

4. “Time spent with cats is never wasted.” — Sigmund Freud

5. “In a cat’s eye, all things belong to cats.” — Joseph Wood Krutch

6. “Black cat on a fence; Halloween two days hence.” — Rusty Fischer

7. “Black cat or white cat; if it can catch mice, it is a good cat.” — Deng Xiaoping

8. “Pounce had it easier than any of us. No one noticed a black cat in the street.” — Tamora Pierce

9. “Actually, when I was little, I even dreamed about riding a black cat.” — Cassandra Peterson

10. “I saw an injured black cat. God knows who has crossed her path.” — Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

Insightful black cat quotes

These quotes remind us how black cats have a certain magic about them. 

11. “Black cats are certainly bad omens for enemies and good luck for friends.” — Shankar Gr

12. “I’m like an eclipse on a Friday, the 13th, with black cats and Hailey’s comet.” — Redman 

13. “A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.” — Groucho Marx 

14. “Whenever the cat of the house is black, the lasses of lovers will have no lack.” — English Proverb

15. “Black cat, nine lives. Short days, long nights, livin’ on the edge, not afraid to die.” — Janet Jackson 

16. “When black cats prowl, and pumpkins gleam, may luck be yours on Halloween.” — Good Housekeeping

17. “A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn’t there.” — Charles Darwin

18. “Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that is not there, and finding it.” — Oscar Wilde

19. “With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase.” — Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat

20. “This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree.” — Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat

Magical black cat quotes

Black cats bring out the magic in people. 

21. “The movie ‘Black Cat,’ from 1934, is one of my favorite movies.” — Kirk Hammett

22. “Beware of the night, child. All cats are black in the dark.” — Jean Genet, The Blacks

23. “Black cats were created to give everyone the opportunity to be owned by a mini-panther.” — Unknown

24. “The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.” — Confucius

25. “Forecasting future events is often like searching for a black cat in an unlit room that may not even be there.” — Steve Davidson

26. “I’ve had two unlucky injuries that are the equivalent of walking under 1,000 ladders and seeing 1,000 black cats.” — Andrew Bogut

27. “A black cat among roses, phlox, lilac—misted under a quarter moon, the sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.” — Amy Lowell

28. “A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. A theologian is the man who finds it.” — H.L. Mencken

29. “Nothing is going to happen to you if you throw salt on the floor, stand under a ladder, or see eight black cats on the street.” — Penelope Cruz 

30. “If there’s a black cat that crosses the street in my path, I will turn around and walk twenty minutes out of my way to not cross it.” — Lauren Groff

Spooky black cat quotes 

These black cat quotes are perfect for anybody who loves Halloween. 

31. “Animals like crows and black cats are not ominous at all; it is the men’s superstitious mind which is the inauspicious one.” — Mehmet Murat Ildan

32. “A black cat passing by the crossroad can stop hundreds of people, what a red light on traffic signal has failed to do for a long time.” — Nitya Prakash

33. “I think my first song ever was when my cat died. It was this awful, dreadful black cat who was angry and hated everything. Yet I was so upset when it died.” — Thomston

34. “Since I always go to work as Elvira, maybe a giant version of a cat. A black cat. I love cats, and I think Elvira would look really good sitting on one.” — Cassandra Peterson

35. “Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn’t there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.” — Robert A. Heinlein

36. “One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it – it was the black kitten’s fault entirely.” — Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass And What Alice Found There

37. “In the pewter mornings, the cat, a black fur sausage with yellow Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries to get onto my head. It’s his way of telling whether or not I’m dead.” — Margaret Atwood

38. “I’ve tried to move [the sidhe-seers] during times of peace and quiet and had the luck of a broken mirror nailed beneath an upside-down horseshoe with a ladder nearby that a black cat just walked under.” — Karen Marie Moning

39. “Every time a boy falls off a tricycle, every time a black cat has grey kittens, every time someone stubs a toe, every time there’s a murder or a fire or the marines land in Nicaragua, the police and the newspapers holler ‘get Capone.’” — Al Capone 

40. “Santa Claus was white, and everything bad was black. The little ugly duckling was the black duck, and the black cat was the bad luck. And if I threaten you, I’m going to blackmail you. I said, ‘Momma, why don’t they call it ‘whitemail’? They lie too.’” — Muhammad Ali

Black cat quotes inspired by Edgar Allan Poe

Here are some haunting black cat quotes for you to enjoy. 

41. “As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human kind.” — Cleveland Amory

42. “When the tea is brought at five o’clock, and all the neat curtains are drawn with care, the little black cat with bright green eyes is suddenly purring there.” — Harold Monro

43. “With the certitude of a true believer, Vellya Paapen had assured the twins that there was no such thing in the world as a black cat. He said that there were only black cat-shaped holes in the universe.” — Arundhati Roy

44. “Any great truth can – and eventually will – be expressed as a cliche – a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance, my grandmother used to say, ‘The black cat is always the last one off the fence.’” — Solomon Short

45. “Story collectors tend to be superstitious. Knock on wood, black cats, four-leaf clovers, that sort of thing. After all, superstitions are the little stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our chaotic world.” — Kristin O’Donnell Tubb, The Story Collector

46. “If I threaten you, I’m blackmailing you. A black cat is bad luck. If you’re put out of a club, you’re blackballed. Angel’s-food cake is white; devil’s-food cake is black. Good guys in cowboy movies wear white hats. The bad guys always wore black hats.” — Muhammad Ali

47. “My old black cat, he passed away this morning. He never knew what a heartache was, woke up late, and he danced till noon. If questioned why, he answered just because. He never spoke much, preferring silence. Eight lost lives was all he had.” — Ian S. Anderson, Old Black Cat

48. “Nikos thought himself to be a very rational man, a man who did not believe that his good luck or bad luck was in any way changed by black cats, walking under ladders, spilling salt, or opening umbrellas inside the house.” — Chris Rose, The Broken Mirror, The Black Cat And Lots Of Good Luck

49. “I had a dream about riding a black cat, and then the next day, I was at this antique mart, and I found this little devil riding a black cat – an Austrian bronze, tiny little thing. It was super tiny. And it was kind of like, “Oh my God, my dream came true.” Except it was a devil, of course. Not me.” — Cassandra Peterson

50. “His mother called such people ignorant and superstitious, but his father only shook his head slowly and puffed his pipe and said that sometimes old stories had a grain or two of truth in them and it was best not to take chances. It was why, he said, he crossed himself whenever a black cat crossed his path.” — Stephen King

Black cats in history

The European Middle Ages were a tough time for cats, especially black cats. 

The superstition that black cats are bad luck derives from medieval beliefs that witches could turn into black cats.

People feared that if you saw a black cat on your path, it meant a witch was attempting to harm you. 

The Bubonic plague spread across Europe like wildfire, killing scores of people. 

Superstitious beliefs heavily influenced many people regarding good and evil. 

The church considered cats evil, so people would kill them, and some blamed cats for spreading the plague. 

Ironically, their belief in killing cats had detrimental effects. 

Killing cats meant that there were fewer domestic animals around who could hunt mice and rats. 

Rodents were influential spreaders of the plague, and killing cats increased the number of vermin capable of spreading disease. 

Today black cats are beloved by pet owners across the nation.

If you are a black cat lover, please tell us your favorite black cat quotes and sayings in the comments below.