Things I Learned in History Class: Satan the Cat and How He Ruined One Woman's Life
Going back through old class notes, and I found this story in my notes from a history class about European women in the early modern age.
This is from the confessions of the Chelmsford Witches in England in 1566:
"Elizabeth Francis testified that her grandmother, whose name was Mother Eve, counselled her to renounce God and his word and to give of her blood to Satan (as she termed it), which she delivered her in the likeness of a white spotted cat, and taught her to feed the said cat with bread and milk, and she did so, also she taught her to call it by the name of Satan and to keep it in a basket.
When this Mother Eve had given her the Cat Satan, then this Elizabeth desired first of the said Cat (calling it Satan) that she might be rich and to have goods, and he promised her she should--asking her what she would have, and she said sheep (for this Cat spake to her as she confessed in a strange hollow voice, but such as she understood by use) and this Cat forthwith brought sheep into her pasture to the number of eighteen."
And then a bunch of other stuff happens, with Satan the Cat making her sleep with this one dude who refuses to marry her, and so Satan the Cat makes him die. And then she gets pregnant, and Satan the Cat gives her a herb and she miscarries, and then Satan the Cat gets her another husband but he's not so great either, so Satan makes the husband become disabled and kills her annoying baby. And then she gives Satan the Cat to an old lady in exchange for a cake. A cake.
Which is the end, except for how she gets accused of witchcraft, has her testimony taken by two assholes who write it up in a witch-killing manual*, is probably tortured, and then gets burned to death.
It's so sad, because there's probably a chance that she really did feel guilty that the people whom she found annoying kept dying off, and then she confesses all of this and gets executed. Something like 300,000 people, disproportionately women, were executed as witches in the Europe and the US, many of them due to confessions extracted by torture. It's a sickening part of our history.
But then you get to Satan the Cat, and you can't help but laugh a little.
*ETA: Sooo, now that I think of it, it's unlikely that this story came from the Malleus Malleficarum, as I implied, since I'm not sure that the guys who wrote that travelled to England. More likely I came across this story in this book: Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: A Documentary History.
ETA2: Academia has ruined my ability to write a title without a colon in it. Someone cure me of this.