In ancient Egypt, the cat was sacred. The goddess Bastet, protector of the home, had a cat's head, and killing a cat was punishable by death. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, when a cat died, everyone in the household shaved their eyebrows in mourning.
Then Europe flipped all of that. In the Middle Ages, the black cat became the witches' animal, and by extension a symbol of evil. In 1233, Pope Gregory IX issued a bull, Vox in Rama, describing heretical rituals in which the devil would appear as half man, half black cat. The document wasn't aimed at cats themselves, and historians consider the idea of widespread massacres it supposedly triggered to be exaggerated. But the association stuck.
In Haiti, where I come from, the black cat often has a bad reputation: in popular imagination, it is linked to spirits and occult practices.
But the same cat, elsewhere, means happiness. In the United Kingdom, according to tradition, the black cat brings luck: sailors kept one on board to protect the ship, and their wives kept one at home to bring their husbands back safe. In Japan, a popular belief also makes it a good-luck charm that wards off bad fortune.
The cat never changed. It's the eye looking at it that changes.
I lived this from the inside. As a little kid, around ten, my mother told us never to touch the big butterflies: they were spirits that brought money. We had to protect them and take care of them.
Then, around 2014-2016, my brother fell ill. I was told that an old man had spoken to him and that the spirit had entered his head. I started to be afraid, afraid of a spirit attacking my family. I left for another area, several kilometers away. That's where it all started: my heart was pounding, I was in pain, everything was going wrong. And I saw a butterfly at my place. Everything seemed to indicate that spiritual forces were attacking me.
Then I remembered a line from the film After Earth, with Will Smith: "Danger is very real, but fear is a choice." I followed the advice. I decided to wait until I could see the monster in front of me, horns and all, and face it. And everything stopped. No more pain, no more fear. The butterfly came, and it left as it had come. Everything went back to normal, just because I stopped feeding the fear.
It's the same with Barça. I'm a Real Madrid fan, but the Barça of 2008 to 2011 was terrifying, invincible in my eyes. And every time they lost, I was so happy that money seemed to come on its own: a raise, a new consultation, something that made me earn more. No logical connection, but my joy in the moment seemed to attract everything.
Danger is real. Fear, though, feeds on our imagination: the more we stare at the problem, the more substance we give it, the more terrifying it becomes. The more we take action (here's the problem, here are the solutions, I'll figure it out along the way), the more the monster shrinks.
The black cat is a monster. And like all monsters, it is only terrifying as long as we look at it from afar.
If this story speaks to you, I made a t-shirt out of it: Black Cat: A Shield, Not a Curse. Not to sell, just to keep the conversation going.