The recently released film Black Panther, which is doing so well in earning $400 million in 10 days, but being the exact opposite of the sort of film that I like, has dramatically increased the popularity of black cats. I hope that this is brilliantly good news because, as all of us know, black cats are the last ones to be adopted at cat shelters. I must add that there is caution in my feelings about this development. I am worried that this is a fad, a temporary spike.
If so the people adopting black cats will give them back to shelters once the effects of the film have waned. Is this ‘impulse buying’? My point is that if people can be swayed so effectively in their opinions about black cats by a CGI fantasy film it does seem that they are taking a shallow approach to making a decision creating a lifelong commitment.
Black cats have perhaps the most unpopular coat type which is partly because of superstition and partly because they are difficult to photograph which means that their owners encounter difficulties taking a good quality selfie of themselves and their cat. That said even before people were taking selfies black cats were still unpopular.
But great news excepting for my reservation mentioned above. People are naming their black cats after the characters in the film. “Black Panther” refers to jaguars, leopards and mountain lions which are melanistic which means that they have very dark coats, almost black with ghost spots and colorations except for the mountain line which has no spots.
Obviously people can’t adopt one of these big wild cats and therefore the next best thing is a beautiful, jet black domestic cat.
One blogger declared to the world excitedly that the benefit of the Black Panther movie is that her local pet shelters went from having around 60 black cats languishing in cages waiting for an adopter to there being none left in the shelter. She said that they’ve all been adopted out and named after the characters in the film. The most popular name is T’challa, followed by Okoyes and Shuris.
This is a surprising blessing. I doubt whether it will last but even a short burst of enthusiasm for the black cat while this film is on release will be welcome at cat shelters across the country in the USA and in Europe.
The source for this post is ladbible.com
It would be great if it changed attitudes permanently. That would be astonishing but very welcome.
Praise God! I fear it will be a fad also, and that many will end up back in shelters as did Dalmatians, chihuahuas, and so on. But this film may make black cats less mysterious and frightening to some people, hopefully leading to better treatment of those cats by people. They’ve had a pretty rough history, poor things.