以“Cats”为题的一篇英语作文

The idea that cats could be witches' familiars is found in writings and trial reports of the 16th century, and has now become a cliché. But they were only one among many animals of which this was said; similarly, though there are references to witches changing into cats, hares are mentioned more often. There is no evidence from England of regular large-scale massacres of ‘satanic’ cats, or of burning them in Midsummer bonfires, as sometimes occurred in Europe. They were occasionally used for demonic ‘special effects’—in 1677 a bonfire for Queen Elizabeth's Day consumed the effigy of ‘a most costly pope …his belly filled with live cats which squalled most hideously as soon as they felt the fire’, supposedly representing a dialogue between Pope and Devil (Cressy, 1989: 177).

Various cures involving the death or mutilation of a black cat are recorded in the 17th and 18th centuries: its head, burnt to a powder, was supposed good for eyeache, and blood from its cut-off