The eyes are the window to the soul…

I had a conversation recently with a friend about a superstition that exists. It’s said, looking into a cats eyes will send you to hell. I’d heard of other myths along similar lines; that looking into a cats eyes causes you bad luck or sends you to another dimension, so I reflected a little on stories I’ve heard surrounding the subject and why they exist.

There’s actually a very simple behavioural reason people shouldn’t directly stare at a cat and certainly not make prolonged eye contact. And that reason is that to cats, as a general rule, that interaction is viewed as hostility. A series of long, slow blinks when they’re confronted with another one cat. And studies indicate that they indicate human counterparts as in effect larger, clumsier cats. So it would stand to reason the easiest way to set a cat at ease is to use the physical communication technique they use with each other.

Below is a link showing a well known cat behaviourist illustrating the slow blink technique:

Maybe when people thought they’d been sent to hell by direct eye contact with a cat, they simply saw a particularly unsavoury behaviour as a result of what the cat deemed aggressive behaviour towards them. Maybe that’s even where the term “hellcat” originated from.